Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

Author: Jon

  • Oregon Brewers Festival

    This year, for the first time since 2007, I was able to make it up to Portland for the Oregon Brewers Festival—the biggest beer festival in Oregon, if not the Pacific Northwest. (They bill it at “North America’s largest gathering of independent brewers” which I’m not so sure about considering the Great American Beer Festival, but anyway.)

    You can read all the various related blogging bits about the OBF over on The Brew Site, my beer blog; beer reviews, vignettes, pictures (soon), that sort of thing. It was a really good trip, and a good festival; the amount it has grown even in the past four years since I was last there is amazing—used to be, you could hit the Fest on the first or second day early, right after they opened, and you’d have the run of the park and the beers, sure there were people there but there were no real crowds and no real lines anywhere.

    That seems to have changed; even Thursday (the opening day) within the first couple of hours the crowd was bigger than I remember and there were lines to beers—in fact, the Maui Brewing CoCoNuT Porter apparently ran completely out by 12:30 (gates open at noon) on the first day—which if you ask me is just insane.

    Because of my beer blog, I was able to get into the special blogger preview early on Thursday, tasting 15 beers to write about (which had to be done by the next day), plus I got a “media” badge and a mug as part of the package. I always feel a little conspicuous and slightly sneaky wandering around wearing the media badge, like I need something more to show for it than just carrying a notebook and a small camera along with me. (Okay, to be fair I had a backpack with those items in it plus the netbook computer, extra water, tokens, and Brew Site business-type cards.)

    I also got the opportunity to meet and hang out with some bloggers and industry folks, which was a nice bonus to the weekend (of course). And hit up a couple of breweries: the Tugboat Brewery which I absolutely love but hadn’t been too in many years, and the new Burnside Brewery which I’ve been reading great things about (and who have some of the more unusual beers that I’ve seen).

    Altogether, a really good weekend.

  • Bandon

    My wife and I just spent an anniversary weekend over on the Oregon Coast, in the southern town of Bandon. I think I’ve written before about how I really like this town; we’ve been three times previous but the last time was some nine years ago, which is too long.

    Bandon is small (about 3300 people) and relatively touristy; it has a mix of the cutesy tourist shops (used books, candy stores, ocean art, antiques and gifts), a small but decent selection of restaurants, and mostly-nice lodging combined with the working-class presence of an Oregon coast fishing town. Add in several good state parks and fantastic beaches, and very decent weather (by Oregon Coast standards), and I do think it’s one of the coast’s gems.

    Without going into full travelogue mode, I will say both Edgewaters and The Loft (both right downtown in the Old Town Bandon area) are fantastic restaurants, and the two candy stores of Cranberry Sweets and Coastal Mist are must-visits.

    One thing I do notice however, is a distinct lack of beer. Not to say there’s no beer there—there is—but ironically the best selection of craft beers that we found on this trip was at the Mill Casino up north in Coos Bay/North Bend. In fact the entire southern stretch of coast below Florence is completely devoid of breweries, probably making it the most under-served area of Oregon in that regard.

    To that end I have to say I think Bandon would be a natural location for someone to open up a brewpub; I suspect it’s got the tourist traffic that would support at least a small one, plus you have a population of at least 25,000 some 20 miles to the north from “Oregon’s Bay Area” (which, no joke, we saw on a sign entering Coos Bay). So naturally, I’ve already started formulating beer ideas in my head and wondering how the numbers might pencil. (You’d ideally need to be located in Old Town Bandon, I think, where you’d get the majority of foot traffic and tourists.)

    So, who’d want to go in on such a venture…?

  • Items of recent awesomeness

    Some of these links aren’t as shiny-new as they were when I started this post, but even so:

    The CDC’s zombie apocalypse preparedness plan: Yes, the CDC is all over the possibility of a zombie apocalypse. For real.

    If zombies did start roaming the streets, CDC would conduct an investigation much like any other disease outbreak. CDC would provide technical assistance to cities, states, or international partners dealing with a zombie infestation. This assistance might include consultation, lab testing and analysis, patient management and care, tracking of contacts, and infection control (including isolation and quarantine).

    Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn move trailer: I knew Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson were making a Tintin movie, but I didn’t realize just how OMGAWESOME it was going to be until I saw the trailer:

    The Javascript PC emulator: pure amazing geekery. This is an x86 processor being emulated in Javascript inside a browser. And it’s running Linux. To be clear: what is essentially a full computer is running independently inside the browser. Which theoretically means you could run, well, anything inside of it.

  • Superman

    A few weeks ago I checked out Superman from the library (the first Christopher Reeve movie) so I could watch it with the kids; it had been far too long since I last saw it, and the kids (naturally) needed an introduction to the best “Superman” movie, well, ever. And I have to say, even though it was made in 1978 and some of the effects are, well, 1978, it holds up.

    I loved the Superman movies when I was a kid; considering the only previous “on screen” Superman adventures around were basically the old George Reeves ’50s television series and the Super Friends cartoons, those movies were like magic when they came out. They turned what I could imagine about a live adaption of the comic and turned it on its ear, they were that good. And Christopher Reeve was a genius bit of casting for that role—completely filled it out like nobody has before or since.

    I’m thinking of the first two movies, primarily, since they hold together relatively well. I was pretty excited about Superman III when it came out, but even then I could tell it wasn’t up to par for the first two; they gave short shrift to Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane (completely ignoring the circumstances of the second movie, it seemed), for instance, and adding Richard Pryor as a campy, weird sort of villain just didn’t click.

    And then Superman IV was just a mess, obvious even to me as a kid at the time.

    I never have watched Superman Returns, which purports to ignore III and IV and operate as a sequel instead to II. Too many bad reviews and from what I read about the movie itself, too much of pretty much the same things they already did in the first two movies, and Brandon Routh just isn’t Superman. And I’m sorry, but the costume looked horrible.

    I actually rather enjoyed the “Lois & Clark: New Adventure of Superman” show that was on during the 90s. Dean Cain was no Christopher Reeve, but he held up.

    And I love the Animated Series that was out around that same timeframe (and which continued into the Justice League series); I haven’t seen all of the episodes but I think it’s probably the best TV series done for the character.

    I haven’t watched “Smallville” though. No real reason, just missed the boat I guess.

    Now, you can probably see where this is going.

    So there’s this new Superman movie coming out, slated for December 2012… Man of Steel. I’m not sure what to make of it yet, but it’s got some pros and cons (in my mind) going for it.

    The good:

    • It’s a reboot. No more sequels or trying to tie into the past movies, this is a case where a reboot is definitely needed. And frankly, I think they can reboot Superman while foregoing the origin story (which I’ve railed against before); everybody knows Superman’s origin. Give it a nod during the credits, or in the first few minutes of the movie in flashbacks or something.
    • Zack Snyder is directing, Christopher Nolan is producing. Snyder directed 300 and Watchmen; Nolan rebooted Batman (and did it right). These are the guys you want doing a Superman movie.
    • The effects. We’re finally in an era where the effects can be believable and amazing and done right; in this case (since I didn’t see Superman Returns, but have to assume the effects were good) I’m thinking of Hancock, which for me pretty well nailed it in the effects department.

    The bad:

    • Well, I don’t know if this is bad, but I’m leery of the casting; I’m not against a Brit taking the role (Henry Cavill(?) has been confirmed as Superman), but Superman is such a tough role to cast properly. Doesn’t matter who they cast, I’ll be skeptical.
    • General Zod as the villain. Not again… General Zod was the main villain of Superman II (also featured in the beginning of the original movie), a thinly-veiled variant of Zod was in the Lois & Clark TV show (“Lord Nor”), and Zod cropped up again apparently on Smallville. (Not to mention, Zod has apparently been playing a prominent role in the recent comic books.) So, what, it was, I’ve got an idea! Let’s use General Zod as the villain in the Superman reboot! Seriously? No, it’s a tired idea. The smartest thing Batman Begins did was to not start with any of the usual villains; let’s see that here. Look, I know Superman is a hard character to pair with a challenging villain: He’s Superman. But it can be done. Frankly, learning that Zod was chosen as the villain again was disappointing as dampens any excitement I might have felt about the movie.
    • DC Comics really hasn’t had much success (with the exception of the last two Batman movies) with any of their franchised properties over the last, oh, dozen years or so. If the new Green Lantern movie coming out this year tanks, then that doesn’t bode very well for Man of Steel.

    Okay, deep breath… Yes, I’m excited for this movie. I hope it’s as good as the original Superman. But… well, we’ll see, won’t we?

  • Yuri’s Night

    Tomorrow, April 12th, is a pretty momentous date: it is the 50th anniversary of the first human being to launch into space (which took place on April 12, 1961) by Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Appropriately enough, the 12th is also when Yuri’s Night is celebrated, a sort of unofficial holiday “world space party” that commemorates that first flight.

    As someone who grew up with a deep interest in space and astronomy (not to mention science and science fiction) I love the idea of Yuri’s Night and I love what the website is doing: presenting a registry of events that are taking place around the world for the event, and letting people register more at no cost. Mostly it seems entirely fitting to celebrate the occasion; it would be neat to have a Yuri’s Night event here in Bend, but it seems the nearest is Portland.

    50 years of manned spaceflight. That’s something to think about.

  • Twitter cleaning

    I figure I need to clean up my @chuggnutt Twitter account (and probably the @hackbend and @brewsite ones as well).

    Not that I have an extraordinary number of followers, or people I’m following—522 and 425, respectively—but I realized there’s a fair amount of “noise” on what amounts to my personal Twitter account and there are accounts I’m also following on either @hackbend or @brewsite, and I don’t really need to see redundant tweets.

    So I’ll be going through my personal Twitter account and weeding out accounts I’m following, and figure if anyone’s using something like who.unfollowed.me and gets offended that I unfollow them, I can at least point to my criteria:

    • If the account hasn’t had an update in 2 months or more, unfollowed.
    • If I’m also already following that account on @hackbend or @brewsite, I’ll unfollow on @chuggnutt.
    • Unless it’s someone I know personally, or have interacted with on @chuggnutt more often, then I’ll keep the (redundant) follow.
    • Of course there are accounts I just find interesting even if I never interact with them, so I’ll keep following those.
    • If the account seems spammy, or keeps posting repetitive tweets, unfollowed.
    • If the account is something like a brewery that I’m not already following on @brewsite—or a Bend business or similar I’m not already following on @hackbend—I’ll follow on those respective accounts and unfollow on @chuggnutt.

    I’m not too worried about the followers to my account; it’s been awhile since I’ve had to do a bot/porn sweep and block accounts, and I haven’t really seen any I’d consider blockable come through lately.

    …I should probably go through and clean up my Facebook sometime, too.

  • The TV post (Spring ’11)

    I usually end up making these type of rants posts this time of year because it’s at the point where the frustration has built and I need to trip the release valve. Well, frustration and just general commentary.

    For instance, “V“: I wrote about this previously, and, well, I’ve bailed. I don’t know what happened to the production or writing of the second season, but when a major plotline is the Visitors’ obsession with finding and destroying the human soul—well, I should hope the ludicrous nature of this is evident in itself.

    Plus, the “science fiction” aspect of the show finally diverged entirely into “fantasy.” Last week’s episode highlighted the human resistance creating a “DNA bomb” that would, I guess, scramble a person’s DNA (which the Visitors are purportedly collecting). Um, what? I didn’t know we had such crazy technology. And never mind the Visitor method of collecting DNA samples from humans: giant spiked Iron Maiden-looking devices tortuously exsanguinating the victim for a single small vial’s worth of DNA. Um, hello? We have this advanced technology known as a “cotton swab” which does the same thing.

    So I’m done with “V”.

    That’s the big one. I’m still watching and enjoying (to various degrees) “Hawaii Five-0”, “The Event”, “Law & Order (Various Flavors)”, “American Idol”, and the other usual suspects. I think I doze through the various “CSI”s.

    “Hawaii Five-0” I enjoy because there’s not a lot of thinking involved, and it looks good. My brother has the amusing observation that they are some sort of crazy Gestapo force but I suppose to a certain extent that’s what makes it entertaining.

    “The Event” is definitely filling in certain roles left vacant by both “Lost” and “24”, a fairly decent show (not dragging out the mysteries too much like “Lost” did) though lately the editing or something has been really choppy; when they jump from plotline to plotline, it’s never quite obvious what timeframe they’re dealing with, as you go from one storyline that’s taking place in the middle of the day to one in the middle of the night.

    I finally concluded that each thread must be self-contained and not happening concurrently—otherwise someone producing that show has to get their editing and sense of time straightened out.

    Not too much to say about “American Idol” yet other than, I’m glad the assholes were booted last week, and damn, that Hailey girl acts like she’s pole dancing on stage. My nickname for her is Stripper Pole.

    And the first rule of this season’s Idol drinking game: take a shot every time Steven Tyler uses the word “beautiful.”

  • RIP Dog

    Our dog Porter had been ailing for a time—a mix of allergies, bad legs and joints, a ruptured disc, and possible Cushing’s, among other things—and sometime in the wee hours of Friday morning last it all finally caught up with him and he passed away fairly peacefully.

    I’m not delving into sentiment or stories, suffice to say it was an odd weekend and I wanted to mark the passing here. And no, there are no plans to get another dog.

  • Lego video games

    For some reason the other day (other week?) I was thinking about the various Lego video game franchises out in the wild:

    • Lego Star Wars (2 games)
    • Lego Indiana Jones (2 games)
    • Lego Batman and Robin
    • Lego Harry Potter

    These games are actually really fun, and I got to thinking about other franchises that might be good fits:

    • Lego Pirates of the Caribbean
    • Lego Matrix
    • Lego Lord of the Rings
    • Lego James Bond
    • Lego Spider-Man
    • Lego Back to the Future
    • Lego Die Hard

    (Even though I just came up with that last one while writing this, it makes me smile; something about “Yippee-ki-yay” and Lego minifigs is just too good to pass up.)

    So I typed in “Lego video games” in Google and linked to Wikipedia’s List of Lego video games and lo and behold, not only is there a third Lego Star Wars coming out this year… but there actually is a Lego Pirates of the Caribbean coming out as well.

    Huh.

  • My Ignite Bend presentation

    Yes, it’s been weeks, but I’m finally talking about my Ignite Bend presentation—it helps that it’s finally on YouTube, since I’m going to embed it here.

    I didn’t have to present until after intermission, and for the most part I was fine the first half, with occasional bouts of nerves. But standing to the side, lined up, waiting for my turn was nerve-wracking.

    But once I hit the stage, two things surprised me: it really went very quickly—it was over almost before I knew it—and it was a lot of fun.

    The only snafu I ran into was with my beer—as befitting Ignite Bend tradition, I had a bottle of Jubelale on stage with me; it was incorporated into my presentation and I was taking occasional sips. But! I failed to account for any spillage—which of course is exactly what happened. It’s really not obvious when you watch the YouTube video—if you didn’t know I spilled, you’d wonder why I talk about “cleaning the floor” and “afraid to take a sip.”

    The spill happens right around the “bottling” slide, of course. The beer foamed up and spilled down the bottle as I drank, running down my hands and dripping on the stage floor. It threw me for a few seconds, but I was able to deal with it.

    And the presentation turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself:

    And, in case you’re interested in my actual slideshow, the Google Docs version is here.