I bought a nice Samsung 500GB SSD recently to replace the ol’ spinning disk that came with my 2010 15″ MacBook Pro (Snow Leopard). Pricing had finally come down to reasonable levels ($280) and this helps stave off my itch to upgrade (eyeing the 13″ Retina MBP).

Prior to the upgrade, I was running a triple-boot setup with Mac OS X, Ubuntu 12.04, and Windows 7 x64. I didn’t use the Ubuntu partition much, so I decided to dump it and fold the space into the Windows partition, with the intention of running Ubuntu in a VM (or just using Cygwin more).

My first problem came when I discovered that my utility for disk cloning, Acronis True Image, didn’t work on MacBooks due to the weird way Macs boot. I cloned the Mac OSX partition using a trial copy of Carbon Copy Cloner, with my new drive plugged into a SATA to USB/eSATA dock that I have. That left me with Mac OS X taking up the entire drive. I installed the SSD in my MacBook, following the instructions from iFixIt. I skipped the battery removal – it’s not really required and I don’t have the tri-wing driver needed to do so. Used pliers to get the screws off/on the side of the drive since I couldn’t find my Torx kit.

After booting into Mac OS X with my new drive, I used the Boot Camp Assistant to shrink the Mac OS partition down. At this point, I tried using Clonezilla to clone my old Windows partition over into the newly created Boot Camp partition, but I could not get it to boot, no matter what. I tried the Windows Startup Repair tools, various command line bcdedit things, etc., to no avail. I would always get “A disk read error occurred. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart.” The partition was readable in Mac OS X, but it just wouldn’t boot.

I finally found this post over at Mark’s Machinations, who had similar issues when moving to a larger drive. I started where he says:

Now exit DiskUtil and fire up the BootCamp Assistant and create your BootCamp partition to whatever size you want.  Follow all of the instructions including inserting your Windows 7 installation disk and the click the “Install” button.

and continued from there. Reinstalled Windows. Cloned my old Windows partition on top (with the -m and -r flags and without the -j2 flag in Clonezilla, as stated in the instructions). Did the bdcedit dance. After all that, all was well, and Windows 7 boots speedily!

I’m not entirely sure what the problem was – it might have been because I had GRUB installed previously. Or maybe it was an issue with the BCD store in Windows.

Mac and cheese is a classic comfort food and I love it during the winter. Creamy, with a crunchy breadcrumb topping and a nice crispy bottom/side crust of caramelized cheese. I typically hit it with some smoky bacon goodness, because, well, bacon. My general philosophy when it comes to mac and cheese and other comfort foods is that if you try to make them healthy, you’re basically removing the “comfort.” Eat smaller portions or less often, but don’t talk to me about non/low fat milk, cheese, etc. for this. Low-fat cheese, in particular, gets odd in melted applications. I like to serve this with a romaine salad for temperature and textural contrast, not to mention as a palate refresher.

Bacon Mac and Cheese

Developed by The RoboGourmet – v. 1.0, 1/18/2013
Adapted from The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook: The Original Classics, by way of Smitten Kitchen

Serves 4-8

Notes: This is a half-recipe because a whole pan is, well, a lot of mac and cheese. Don’t ask how many calories are in this. The smokiness of the bacon is lovely in this. If omitting the bacon (why?!?), replace the tablespoon of rendered bacon fat with a tablespoon of butter. Recommend freshly ground nutmeg and black pepper. Whole nutmeg and a Microplane Zester/Grater. Done. Same for the cheese – save yourself some money and buy your cheese in block form. Keep refrigerated right until you grate it for easy grating. A good box grater will make short work of this. I use the big holes.

Serve with a crunchy green salad.

Pasta
1/2 pound (8oz) elbow macaroni

Topping
3 slices white bread
1 tablespoon unsalted butter

Cheese Sauce
3oz (2-3 slices) bacon
2-3/4 cups whole milk
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus a little more for the baking dish
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
9 oz sharp white cheddar cheese
4 oz Gruyère or 2.5 oz Pecorino Romano

Preheat oven to 375° F

Prepare the cheeses: Grate the cheeses and put in a large bowl. Toss to blend.

Cook the macaroni: Put 2 quarts of water in a pot and bring to a rolling boil. Salt the water so that it tastes like the sea – about 1 tablespoon. Add the macaroni and cook until the pasta is slightly undercooked, about 3-4 minutes. Transfer to a colander, rinse with cold water to stop further cooking, and then drain.

Prepare the topping: While waiting for the water to boil for the macaroni, trim and cut the bread into cubes. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in the microwave in a medium bowl (1 minute on high). Put the bread cubes in the bowl and toss until evenly coated with butter.

Make the cheese sauce: Put the milk in a covered medium saucepan over medium heat and bring almost to a boil. In the meantime, cook the bacon in a large skillet over medium heat until crispy. Transfer the bacon to a paper towel lined plate to drain. Pour off all but 1 tablespoon of the rendered bacon fat.

Check the milk – it should be hot. If not, wait until it is nearly boiling. If boiling, turn down the heat to low so it does not burn.

Return the skillet to the stove over medium heat and add 2 tablespoons unsalted butter. When the butter fully melts and is bubbling, add the flour and whisk for 1 minute to create a roux.

Add the hot milk to the roux in increasing amounts while whisking constantly – first a tablespoon at a time, then a few tablespoons at a time, then 1/3 cup, etc. Each time you add milk, ensure it is fully whisked into the sauce so you don’t get lumps. Once you have added all the milk, continue to whisk until the sauce bubbles and becomes thick, about 8 minutes.

Turn off the heat and whisk in the salt, nutmeg, cayenne, and black pepper. Chop the bacon into bits and add to the sauce. Add about 3/4 of the grated cheese and stir until the cheese has melted (I recommend a spatula). Add the cooked macaroni and stir until the pasta is evenly coated.

Butter an 8” square baking pan (or other 1.5 quart baking dish) and transfer the macaroni mixture to the pan, using the spatula to smooth and work the mixture into the corners. Top with the remaining cheese and then the breadcrumbs.

Bake until golden brown, about 30 minutes (good time to prep a salad), then cool on a wire rack for 5 minutes. Serve.

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Les Misérables is one of the greatest musicals of all time and I was really looking forward to the movie adaptation. While an OK movie, sadly, it falls far short of what it could have been, with significant flaws. Let’s start with casting – Russell Crowe was a bad choice for Javert. While Crowe doesn’t have a bad voice, it’s simply too angelic (“little boy” was what I called it walking out of the theater). Javert needs far more grit, more punch. Anne Hathaway delivered a good performance, but she did not fit my preconception of Fantine as a somewhat older woman. Hugh Jackson was pretty good as Jean Valjean and Samantha Barks, the West End veteran, was excellent as Eponine. I was initially delighted to see Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter as the Thenardiers, but their performances seemed restrained from the heights of ridiculousness I know they are capable of and their performances lacked the joyfulness/silliness the parts are known for. Eddie Redmayne and Amanda Seyfried as Marius/Cosette were fine, but there was no chemistry there, but then, I’ve never seen a performance, either on stage or screen, where I’ve really connected with that romance – I just don’t buy the “love at first sight” bit. Colm Wilkinson, the original Jean Valjean, has a small part as the Bishop who initially sets Valjean on the road to self-reinvention.

Tom Hooper, noted for “The King’s Speech”, directs, and he makes a number of interesting decisions. The first is that all the singing is captured live – there is no lip-syncing. I’m of two minds about this. I think it’s a very bold move and certainly connects the viewer to the performance in an more visceral way. I always notice lip-syncing and it’s a bit distracting, though I typically forgive it when the recorded performance is good. However, this decision perhaps led to a decision to use very tight headshots for most, if not all, of the songs. I’m not saying the headshots are bad, but when you do it for all the songs it gets rather tiring being in everyone’s face all the time. Give me some variety – some sweeping shots – show me more of Paris. That and they had problems keeping the faces in focus. What I really, really, hate is the use of the handheld camera. I don’t know if it was necessary to maintain the closeups, but I detest the constant bobbing of the handheld camera – it makes me motion sick. I don’t know who decided the use of a unstabilized camera injects realism/grittiness into a film, but that person should be shot. The human visual system is excellent at tracking motion in reality and when a large portion of the field of view is bobbing up and down without the inner ear detecting anything, this disconnect just causes nausea. USE A STEADICAM.

Oh, and what’s with the tilted shots? What are we, teens from the 90s?

There are a few songs that I didn’t recognize, but it appears that’s because I’m used to listening to incomplete soundtracks.

The movie never really drew me in. I love the story and I teared up when Marius sings “Empty Chairs and Empty Tables” and more at the end scene where Valjean dies. But the overall movie lacked for passion, perhaps because the musical itself has some rough spots as well, which get magnified on the big screen. Still, I think that in better hands, this could have been glorious.

Fans of the musical will have to see it, and should, but first-timers should really plan to see a stage performance.

Just installed Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin, x64) on my MacBook Pro (2010) and had a few issues. Many things are dealt with on the community wiki page, but I still had some problems:

1. I can’t unplug/plug in an external monitor and have it automatically recognized. I have to pull up the nVidia X Server Settings app and then detect and enable the display manually. And if I don’t disable the display before unplugging, I can’t seem to disable the display without restarting.
2. Audio over HDMI (via a Mini Display Port adapter) doesn’t work. The output doesn’t show up in the Sound control panel.
3. The system bell in the terminal did not work.

1 and 2 were solved by upgrading to a newer version of the nVidia driver than the one currently in repository. I added the Ubuntu-X Swat PPA, which tracks newer versions of the driver, along with other newer, but considered stable, xorg components. I avoided the xorg-edgers PPA, which is to far on the bleeding edge for my taste.

Run this to add the Ubuntu-X Swat PPA and install the latest components:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Problem 3 looks to be an integration issue between components or something, according to this bug report. This kind of thing takes forever to resolve, but the problem seems to be twofold: the bell volume in X11 is set to zero by default and the bell sound hasn’t been uploaded into Pulse Audio sample cache. This can be temporarily fixed with:

pactl upload-sample /usr/share/sounds/gnome/default/alerts/glass.ogg bell.ogg xset b 100

To make this permanent for your user profile, add the pactl line to ~/.xprofile and the xset line to ~/.bashrc.

Update (2012-08-28): So it’s not all moonlight and roses. I’m seeing random xorg crashes and logouts occurring. A look around the internet suggests this is due to newer nVidia drivers not playing well with xorg. Sigh. The solution for now is to use Unity 2D – this can be selected at login by clicking the Ubuntu logo in the upper right corner of the login box and selecting Ubuntu 2D. You can make this the default by running:

sudo sed -i 's/user-session=ubuntu/user-session=ubuntu-2d/g' /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

I don’t know why nVidia has to be so difficult about working with Linux. Are they so tied to Microsoft? I understand Linus’ recent rant on the subject better. Perhaps this is why Apple has been using more ATI chips lately…

Debugging a Bash script today and ran into this problem – return/exit codes from functions may not exceed 255! My script backed up a subversion repository only when a new version of the repo existed, however, the function that checked the version had it’s output returned modulo 255, causing a problem.

The solution was to return the data with echo, as suggested here: http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/assortedtips.html#RVT

Then the call

curVersion=`check_version ${SUBVERSION_REPOSITORY} ${SUBVERSION_REPOSITORY_NAME}`

assigns the result from the function check_version to curVersion.

I have a Canon EOS 20D and recently I started using SDHC cards for storage in combination with an SD-CF adapter. Works great and SDHC cards are 1) pretty cheap compared to CF cards and 2) work with all the other devices I have that support SDHC, including my MacBook Pro. I got a pair of 16GB cards and it’s pretty hard to use them both up on long trips. I ended up using only a little over one card on my recent two week vacation where I shot about 2000 photos in RAW+JPEG mode.

Anyways, I was clearing out a card so I could put some new photos on it and I decided to use my camera’s format option rather than doing an erase all, thinking it would be faster. It might have been, but it formatted the card to an 8GB capacity – half of what it should be. Turns out that while my camera can handle 16GB cards, it can only format 8GB ones. Popping it back into my computer to format it didn’t help either, as it now only recognized 8GB as well. Some hunting around the Internet led me to this blog post, which suggested reformatting the card with this USB_Format utility, which worked like a charm and I have 16 GB available on that card again. Now I just have to remember not to format this card in my camera again…

Berkeley. It’s a nice place to live and has some pretty good pizza in The Cheese Board, but the problem is that sometimes you get tired of vegetarian pizza, as good as it may be. Plus, they have an obsession with garlic olive oil which they apply liberally to all their pizzas. Not that it’s bad, but it makes things a bit greasy sometimes.

Recently, I needed a pizza with meat that didn’t involve the deep-dish heaviness of Zachary’s and Yelp pointed me to Emilia’s Pizzeria, over on Shattuck near Ashby. Emilia’s (named for the owner’s daughter) is a one-man operation run by Keith Freilich, who’s pizza pedigree includes Flour+Water over in SF, Pizzaiolo in Oakland, and in New Jersey, Grimaldi’s and a random Pizza Hut. Keith started as a Princeton grad (he mentioned wanting to go to Carnegie Mellon, which gives him bonus points) and worked in IT, which brought him to the Bay Area. After the dot-com bubble burst, we decided to get into pizza full time.

Because this is a one-man operation, he’s streamlined things to fully utilize his resources. This means that you can’t just call up and expect pizza in 30 minutes. On the day you want pizza, you call in and pick a time slot. He starts answering the phone at 4pm – the line is typically busy and you have to keep trying. Depending on the day of the week, you’ll typically get a slot at 6pm or later. I’ve called at 5pm and gotten an 8pm slot. The one nice thing about this is that your pizza will definitely be ready at the stated time. Period. I’ve ordered close to a half-dozen pizzas from Emilia’s and he’s always been on time.

Then you have only one choice of size, the 18″ which is a large to extra-large pizza. Thin crust with sauce, mozzarella, and basil are standard for $18. Then you can add up to 4 toppings from a short list, including sopressata and Calabrian chilis, which are Italian hot chili peppers. I wish black olives were on the list. The pepperoni and sausage are both tasty toppings.

Excellent ingredients and a great crust make for a superb pizza. Keith uses a high heat gas oven cranked to over 800 degrees F to simulate a coal fired oven – the result is a lightly charred crust somewhat reminiscent of New York style pizza. Good chew, while still being pretty light.

I love it. It’s great. While I still prefer Pizza California (not to be confused with CPK) down in the South Bay because I like their crispy medium crust, loaded with toppings (Earthquake!) this is a wonderfully tasty option up here in the East Bay. I am always drooling with anticipation when I’m driving home with a pie in the car. Heck, if you’ve read down this far, you’re probably hungry. Click on the first image of this post for some full-size mouth-watering deliciousness. If you’re not hungry, well, check your pulse. I never have leftover pizza.

While you can eat at Emilia’s, be aware that there are only two tables – it’s a small establishment. Oh, and they only take cash. They’re open Tuesday through Saturday from 5pm to about 9pm. It’s worth checking the webpage for updates (he also tweets @emiliaspizzeria) as Keith occasionally closes on random days or has special opening days as he recently did for Super Bowl Sunday. Street parking is usually available right in front of the store.

A few notes:

1.  1.7 requires upgrading your working copy, so after you upgrade, all the icon overlays in Explorer showing you the state of the working copy disappear, making it seem like they are not revision tracked. You need to right click on the root of each checked out repository and select SVN Upgrade Working Copy.
2.  If you’re using public key authentication, Pageant 0.60 does not work with TortoiseSVN 1.7. You’ll need at least 0.61. 0.62 worked for me. Putty/Pageant Download Link, TortoiseSVN Forum Message.

Otherwise, I haven’t seen problems on Windows 7 x64 Professional.

Spring Mountain Vineyard is an 800+ acre winery located near St. Helena on the western slopes of Napa Valley. The winery has a history going back to 1884, making a splash in the famous 1976 Judgement of Paris, where it placed fourth in the white wine category. Since then, the winery gained notoriety as the shooting location for the 80′s soap, Falcon Crest, which shot exteriors for six-weeks each summer, including the Victorian mansion on the grounds. More recently, the winery was purchased by Jacqui Safra, a Swiss banker, who has focused on making the winery the best it can be, bringing in Bordeaux consultants and the like. A naturalist himself, he cares about sustainable, biodynamic practices. This has paid off in recent years, with their signature Elivette Bordeaux/Meritage-style blend (2005) winning a Gold Medal in Decanter Magazine’s 2010 World Wide Wine Awards. In addition, French Laundry, Thomas Keller’s three-Michelin-starred restaurant, currently has three of their wines (Sauvignon Blanc, Estate Cabernet, Elivette) on their wine list.

Trivia: Elivette is a portmanteau of Mr. Safra’s parents’ names.

The vineyard has 226 acres planted across 135 blocks which range in elevation from 400 feet above sea level to 1450 feet and were originally four separate vineyards (Miravalle, Chevalier, Alba, La Perla). This is definitely mountain wine. Because of the rocky soil and steep terrain, the vines are planted much closer together (4-7 times denser), which reduces the yield of each vine and more importantly, the stress on each vine. Because of the higher density, the winemaker also went with a very old (Roman times!) method of vine training – the vertical gobelet, which is used to maximize sunlight penetration into the vine. This is important due to the hillside location, which limits the amount of sunlight exposure.

It was a beautiful fall day last year in September, that I found myself standing under olive trees, looking up at the vines growing on the terraced hillside. I was there for a standing tasting, and we started with their 2008 Sauvignon Blanc. Cool and crisp, it was how I liked my white wines and matched the morning beautifully. Progressed through a nice ’07 Syrah and a very nice ’07 Cabernet. But for me, the highlight was the Elivette blend. The ’06 was very good, but the ’01 they let us taste was superb. I admit this was my first taste of decade-old wine, as I can’t afford to pick them up off the shelf, but boy, that’s what I want it to taste like! The depth of flavor and the smoothness was… remarkable. My tasting partner, Mark, said he thought it was pretty good, but not the best he’d had for that age. The generous and multiple pours were very nice, especially with such lovely wines.

I asked our hostess, Jeridan, about their harvest, and she commented that it was going to be very late, extending through October and perhaps even November.

Though I was only there for the tasting, there was a VIP/rich-muckety-muck who had shown up in a limo, and so we got an abbreviated bonus tour of the grounds and their wine cave. Jeridan was wonderful in showing us around and even offered us figs and squash from their organic garden. The grounds are quite beautiful – if you’re taking people who want to sightsee a bit more (or are Falcon Crest fans), it’s worth getting the seated tasting, which includes a tour of the grounds, which are fairly extensive and include both edible and decorative gardens.

I should mention that the VIP status of our fellow tasters may have affected my particular tasting experience and may not represent a typical experience.

Tours and tastings are only available by appointment and occur on the hour. Without an appointment, you won’t get past the front gate. Tasting options run from the standard varietal tasting at $25 through their reserve (Elivette) vertical tasting at $100. The tasting fee is refunded with minimum purchase.

Highly recommended.

Phil’s Sliders is a new burger place that opened last year here in Berkeley on Shattuck between Addison and University – two doors down from the Half Price Books. It’s a smallish spot, some would call cozy, with a community chalkboard covering the bottom half of the left wall and a bare brick wall on the right. Seats about 30.

It’s a simple menu – beef sliders ($2), portabello mushroom sliders ($2), potato tots ($2.50), poppyseed cole slaw ($2). Shakes for $2.50, drinks for $2. There’s a rotating desert selection and a s’mores bar ($2). Simple menu, but the execution of that menu is excellent.

It’s quite a good slider – beef is grass-fed (Marin Sun), so not as juicy as grain-fed, but they cook to medium-rare to help offset that. Great flavor with cheddar, sesame seed bun, and secret sauce (thousand island + chopped pickles). Two is a good number for an average eater, three if you’re hungier. You can add portabella mushroom for $1, and bacon for $0.50. I do wish they’d toast the buns. For the vegans out there, the portabella slider is quite tasty as well.

The homemade tater tots are great. Squared-off oblongs of shredded potato, nice and crispy on the outside, tender on the inside, with just right amount of salt. Lovely with ketchup. The poppyseed cole slaw is a nice accompaniment, adding freshness to the meal, though the poppyseed reminds me of the sad salads that United Airlines serves on its flights. But that’s no reflection on the slaw itself. The slaw comes in a good sized portion – I’d recommend splitting an order with a friend.

Small selection of drinks, with very few sugar-free options. None of your standard soda options. I haven’t tried the shakes yet, but I’ve tried the iced tea and the homemade ginger ale. The iced tea is nothing to write home about. The ginger ale is OK – has good ginger flavor, but lacks depth. Both come in pretty small glasses and are way-overpriced at $2. I would like to see either cheaper pricing or at the very least a free refill policy.

Service is fine – you order and pick up at the counter, but both times I’ve been someone has checked in with me during my meal to make sure everything is OK, which is a nice touch. The first time, it was the owner himself, Hugh Groman. Seating-wise, I dislike the high tables and chairs – once I climb into the chair I find it difficult to pull up to the table. Otherwise, it’s a nice, well-lit space with a high ceiling.

A meal here is a little on the pricey side for the amount of food you get, but the ingredients are of high-quality - all organic – and the downtown Berkeley location probably doesn’t help either. My meal for two (4 sliders, 2 tots, cole slaw, 2 drinks) came to $19. With the $18 for $9 Yelp deal that they had when they opened, this works out to be a great deal.

As I mentioned, I’ve been to Phil’s twice, once in September last year and once recently. Food and service quality was the same both times.

I’m definitely headed back to Phil’s in the future.

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