9

Nathan Myhrvold and Modernist Cuisine

Filed under: Review

Nathan Myhrvold, an interesting character I’ve following for a few years now, has been in the news lately for his co-authorship with Maxime Bilet and Chris Young of the new food bible Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking (Amazon link). (Peep that beautiful, 100% WordPress-powered site.) I pre-ordered it forever ago, a fact that may surprise friends who know how little I cook, but I do love food and I was as interested in the pictures and the result of a detail-oriented and science-driven obsession with quality that goes all the way down to the stochastic printing process as the articles/recipes .

The books are, in a word, stunning. I’m probably a lifetime away from attempting a 30-hour burger, but last night I did try a sous-vide approach to a New York sirloin and it turned out amazing. (Though that photo probably won’t be in a future edition of Modernist Cuisine.) The fact I can barely scramble eggs but made a super-good steak might portend the apocalypse. I think sous-vide cooking is something that will appeal a lot to engineers or analytically minded folks because it’s a controlled process with predictable outcomes.

Here are some interesting links and videos I’d recommend around Modernist Cuisine, sous-vide cooking, and Nathan Myhrvold himself:

• Nathan’s appearance on the Colbert report is a good 5-minute overview.
• Incredible Edibles, the Mad Genius of Modernist Cuisine is the New Yorker’s review.
• Cook From It? First, Try Lifting It, New York Times review.
• Serious Eats has had fantastic coverage, but I was most jealous of the 29-course meal from the Modernist Cuisine cooking lab.
• A 1997 profile of Nathan Myhrvold in New Yorker.
• His company Intellectual Ventures is controversial for its use of patents, as Malcolm Gladwell covered, the NY Times, an excellent Wired UK profile last month, and less kindly in Fortune.
• From this excellent New Yorker blog post there are links to profiles of David Chang, Grant Achatz, and a cool article on desserts that includes Albert Adrià.
• The Serious Eats sous vide steak article was my main guide for last night’s attempt, including their guides on resting meat, slicing against the grain, and general steak tips.
• Here’s a pretty friendly Youtube video for the same that is basically what I did except without the mushrooms or pre-sear.
• The eGullet forums appear to be a hub for all things modernist cuisine, and an epic thread about MC-the-book.
• If after reading/watching the above you’re ready to dive in like I was, I ended up with the Sous Vide Supreme after reading this review.
• The WP-powered Modernist Cuisine official blog has a ton of great links and photos.

If you made it this far, two bonuses:

At the EG Conference in 2007 I interviewed Nathan Myhrvold about the Dvorak keyboard layout, which I’ve used about 11 years now, and here’s that video:

Second, Mark Pearson of Pear Press (also associated with one of my other favorite authors John Medina) recommends the Pizza Nepoletana technique in volume 2 page 26 as an accessible dish, and the tip on decanting wine in a blender.

Thanks to many friends for the links, and also for listening to me blather on about this for the past week or two. You may also be subject to more experiments in the future.

I’m just going to keep updating this post with more links:

• 2008 article on Sous Vide with some recipes, including a nice-looking salmon one from Nathan.

18

Peplink Multi-WAN Routers

Filed under: Review

I live and work on the internet, so when I have trouble connecting it really slows me down. About a year or so ago I started looking into multi-WAN routers that would, at least, support two internet connections and failover to the other one, and as a bonus maybe provide some speed benefits as well. Here’s the story of that journey.

(more…)

37

First Impressions of Sony X

Filed under: Review

I’m a little addicted to gadgets, especially Sony laptops which have served as my primary on-the-go machines for the past few years because of their power and portability. When I first saw the Vaio X, Sony’s new ultra-thin and ultra-light laptop, I was taken aback. It looked beautiful, but so was the Envy 133 and the Envy was a complete waste of time and money due to a really bad trackpad and performance. Anyway, I’ve been playing with the X1 for 5-6 hours now, and here are some unordered thoughts:

1. It is the sexiest and most elegant laptop I’ve held or seen. Feels like it’s from the future.
2. It feels almost too light, I actually threw it up and caught it, particularly with the normal-sized battery.
3. I got the champagne color, which was a good choice.
4. The ethernet port works in a really interesting way.
5. Speed of browsing, installing, everything feels pretty good with Windows 7, but it’s obvious the graphics card is pretty underpowered. The moment you turn transparency on or get a flash video on Blip going it starts to stutter a bit.
6. That said, I could imagine using this as my primary machine for short and medium trips.
7. The keyboard takes a bit of getting used to in a way I haven’t run into before: the space bar is hard to hit. The keyboard is very compressed in vertical space so your thumb falls below where the space bar is, and you have to retrain your hand to be in a different position which isn’t as comfortable. The shift button can be hard to hit but that’s much easier to get used to, I’ve done it on other small keyboards. I’m not sure why they made it so small, it feels like it could stretch out a bit more.
8. Other big annoyance is the trackpad — it’s really narrow. Windows machines do the trackpad scroll on the right and bottom edges of the pad and I find myself triggering that accidentally because the tracking area is so tiny. Again, lots of apparent space toward the bottom of the laptop just a really narrow tracking area. This is easier to get used to than the keyboard, though, and the trackpad feels nice like most Vaios and unlike the Voodoo Envy.
9. I love that it has two USB ports, and a regular VGA connector instead of some weird micro-display-port you need a dongle for. (An Apple decision that bugs me almost as much as the recessed headphone connector on the original iPhone.)
10. Screen is gorgeous, like all recent Vaios.
11. Did I mention it’s drop-dead gorgeous? It’s the first laptop I’ve had in 5 years that I don’t want to put stickers on.
12. Hardware-wise, way better than the Air.

So while it won’t be replacing my Z890 as primary workhorse for now, the X is so light I might take it on my next few trips and use it as a day-top. I’m especially excited by the prospect of the 14 hour battery life (probably 10 in real life use) giving me freedom from power cords through even a whole day at a WordCamp. We’ll see in a week or two if I’m able to comfortably adjust to the too-small keyboard and trackpad.