The Little Penguin 2011 cab sauv was a great cooking wine - drinkable, cheap, flavorful. The 2010 Little Penguin merlot is a nice sipping wine as well. One reviewer (google-translated from French) cites "Powerful nose releasing dominant aromas of vanilla, red berry jam and wood. This dry red expresses good acidity and smooth tannins". As with the cab sauv, the raw alcohol nose up front is a bit distracting. Palate-wise, I was more reminded of blue or blackberry than red berry; other reviewers also suggeste... (...more)

Perhaps, as the movie quote goes, the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist. Surely though, a close second greatest lie must be that God, Whose paramount creation is Man, somehow despises the carnal half of human nature, and values us only insomuch as we sweep that half of our nature under the rug.

Someday Mozilla will finish wanking over features of dubious utility, and develop reliable profile backup/restore from within Thunderbird. Until then, we have MozBackup. MozBackup can (and probably should) take a configuration file parameter at the command line. Its file format is basically ZIP, ergo it can encrypt archives. However, if you want unattended backup you'd have to store the password in plain text in the config file, and plaintext passwords make babby Jesus cry. So I run a batch file to call Mo... (...more)

The Riceland extra-long-grain enriched white rice didn't turn out too bad last time, in that I didn't have to scrub the pot with steel wool to clean it after. I think the trick is mostly giving it a generous cool time, so that evaporation doesn't cause the rice in contact with the pot to stick while transferring to storage. However, heating is still tricky because the damn hot plate heats beyond boiling and then doesn't cool quickly to simmering temperature, so removing the pot from heat until it stops boi... (...more)

Rather than just picking blindly, I actually paid attention to Pubilx's wine-shelf labeling to get 2 economical ($5/bottle), non-sweet red wine picks: both Little Penguin (a southeast Australian winery), 2011 cabernet sauvignon and 2010 merlot. Pubilx had no malbecs under $10/bottle and I frankly just don't get $10 worth of enjoyment from 750ml of wine by the glass, much less as a bean stew flavoring. First, the cab sauv: Wine-Searcher.com gives it 10/10 and Vinopedia's 6 ratings for all vintage years a... (...more)