browngeek

When I think of wine-tasting, Napa and Sonoma are the first places that come to mind. While they are beautiful and have some of my favorite wineries, the drive there is upwards of 100 minutes. That makes the wine-tasting a full day trip. I didn’t really mind that until I discovered that there are plenty of wineries right in my backyard - the Santa Cruz Mountains.

It turns out that there are about 75 wineries spread across the mountains, and the drive to most of them is under an hour! It also turns out that 50+ of the wineries participate in a “Passport Program” that allows free-tasting on four designated Saturdays a year - for a one-time $30 purchase. Very cool deal. So a large group of us went up the mountains yesterday as it was Passport Saturday.

Here are the wineries we visited-

• Cinnabar:The tasting-room is in downtown Saratoga. They were pouring a nice mix of whites and reds and a port that was made from Cabernet Sauvignon grapes.
• Savannah-Chanelle: This very French-sounding winery is tucked away up a hidden alley. Their whites were unimpressive. But both their Pinot Noirs more than made up for it (especially the Gonsalus label).
• Pichetti : A very crowded tasting room invited us as we walked in between horse barns. Our busy hostess poured us some nice blends known as The Pavones. The hit, however, was the white port - “Mission Angelica”. Known as the Liquid Love, it was so sweet that the recommended way to serve it is with ice and a lemon-rind!
• Fellom Ranch : This is a family-owned ranch atop some of the tallest points of the mountains. In general, I like ranch-style wineries - and since they also served some bread, cheese, hot sausages and superb views, Fellom Ranch became an instant hit. And I made it a point to tell the owners that it was my favorite winery of the day. In return for my compliments, they poured me a special tasting of their vintage Zinfandels - from 1996 and 1990! Brilliant!
• Ridge : This was the last stop of the day. Ridge was pouring some nice blends of Cabernet and Zinfandel. The hostess pointed us that some of their grapes are from 120-years old vines! That made the wines taste even better.

It was a fun trip with a fabulous group of people and some surprisingly unique wines. The best part was that it was a *half-day* trip, with plenty of the evening still open. I highly recommend the Wineries of Santa Cruz Mountains.

Its been a while since I wrote about a film. Not because I haven’t seen any for a long time. Its because there has not been once that has been worthwhile. Recently, I saw Gone Baby Gone. Its very unique and I had to write about it.

“Gone Baby Gone” is the maiden venture of Ben Affleck (of Bennifer fame) as a director. And I have to tell you he is good at it. GBG is about a private detective (Casey Affleck, brother of Ben) who help solve the case of a missing 4-year old girl. The story revolves around the detective’s relationship with his girlfriend, the missing girl’s mom and uncle, a police detective (Ed Harris) and the police chief (Morgan Freeman). It it set in the city of Boston where the Afflecks grew up. And that fact massively helps with the story telling. Being a “local”, Affleck simply knows what a neighbourhood looks like and how its people interact. Additionally, the cinematography (John Toll, Oscar-award winner for BraveHeart) fits so well into the neighbourhood that the film “just works”.

Example Scene: Tense situation in a bar. Its all dark inside. Casey Affleck starts to walk out of the bar, backwards, while pointing a gun at the bartender. He then opens the bar door with his back. Sunlight fills the screen - almost blinding, as Affleck turns around and walks into the street . A fantastic transition. All in one sequence.

There are many scenes like the above that keeps the film brilliant. Casey Affleck is not the best actor, but he is definitely a good fit here. Ed Harris shines as the police detective that hates pedophiles. Morgan Freeman plays his usual self (I do wish it had been Freeman narrating GBG instead of Casey Affleck’s sleepy voice).

After a couple of expected twists in the story, the final twist left me satisfied. In fact, I even found myself asking “What would I have done in that situation?”. Not many films make me ask that question.

GBG is a terrific film and I expect screenplay and cinematography nominations from the Academy.

Google just released a preview video of its new Andriod mobile platform. Many have made jokes about the video - Sergey Brin’s hangover look or how cold it is. The real joke, however, is the 10-million-dollar developer “challenge”. Its not a challenge - its a PR gimmick. Google’s attempt to attract media spotlight.

Shouldn’t I be enthusiastic about this challenge - myself being a developer and all. No. The real developers, the ones that are passionate about building apps on the next cool platform, don’t do it for the money. They do it for the heck of it - or for fame amongst peers. Sure, there will be plenty of developers that will take up Andriod’s challenge - after all, Google is known for being very developer-friendly. And therein lies Android’s pitfall. Courting developers from the outset.

Again, being a developer myself, I appreciate and agree that developers rule. But not when it comes to building mobile apps. The apps that run on your cellphone should have the simplest and the least confusing user interface. The unfortunate fact is that developers suck at designing simple user-interfaces. By definition, developers are more analytical than the average user and therefore can handle - in fact, expect - complex user interfaces. Thats why ALL mobile apps are too cumbersome and suck ass. They are designed by developers. Except the iPhone.

Why did the iPhone succeed? Yes, there was a lot of hype built in - but the key reason for its success is its darn simplicity. And why is the iPhone so simple to use. Its squarely because the user-interfaces were developed by designers, not developers. Designers are more creative than analytical. They understand the average user. They *get* the simple user experience.

Apple shunned the developers by releasing the iPhone without an SDK. Google shunned the cellphone users by releasing an SDK without a phone. The iPhone is already an household name. And Andriod?

I was using VirtueDesktops as the virtual desktop solution on my Mac OS X, Tiger. It allowed to separate my apps into different desktops (named Browse, Code, Photos, Misc).

While VirtueDesktops is a slick software and worked really well, I had a major peeve about it. The desktops are not cleanly separated. Apps opened in one desktop should be visible only in that desktop. Unfortunately with VirtueDesktops, Cmd+Tab will show all apps that are open, across desktops.

This is because of the underlying design of the Mac OS. Applications are “document” driven - each window you open is a document within the same app. Other major OS, like Windoze are “window” driven where each window you open becomes another process of its own. That’s the reason that on the Mac, Cmd+Tab always shows exactly one instance of each open app - no matter how many windows (documents) are open. Its one of the most pleasing things in the Mac - Cmd+Tab always shows one row, for all the open apps. Alt-Tab in other OS, there are 4 rows of all open windows - Yuck.

Back to VirtueDesktops. While by design, it could not provide the clean-separation of desktops, the irritating part is that Cmd+Tabbing to an app does not really go to the desktop where that app is open.

So, Spaces was one of the features of Leopard I was looking forward to. Its the first virtual desktop solution from Apple for the Mac. And since it is part of the OS, I was expecting the clean-separation.

Alas, it did not happen. Cmd+Tab always shows all the open apps. It appears that Spaces does not, after all, hide the document nature of the OS. That was a definite bummer for me. And although Spaces does change desktops when Cmd+Tabbing to an app, it does it to the extreme. It *always* does. Say I have Finder open in one desktop 1 (Oh, another annoyance of Spaces - cannot change Desktop names!). And I am working in Desktop 2. To create an instance of Finder in 2, I need to Cmd+Tab to the Finder app, which switches to Desktop 1. Now I create another instance (document) of Finder. Then I have to manually drag and drop this new instance into Desktop 2 by opening the Spaces view. Really Frustrating!

For Spaces to be useful, it needs to make the clean-separation of desktops. Period.

Ok, if thats too much to ask, at least,
1. Have a way to open a new instance of an already open app in a different desktop.
2. Cmd+` should rotate between instances of the same app across spaces.
3. Allow changing name of desktops. Seriously, Desktop 1, 2, 3 and 4 are so un-Apple!

In the end, Spaces leaves me underwhelmed. And the news that VirtueDesktops has reached its own end is not helping either.

Virtually between a rock and hard space.

The new Dashcode tool in Leopard is pretty nifty. In 60 seconds, I created a very useful RSS widget for the comments on “theWhole > sum(parts)”. No kidding. The tool is packaged with a slew of templates for various kinds of widget and is definitely a surprising little gem.

The RSS widget is neatly parked in my Dashboard. Now in one keystroke (F12) I will be on top of what is happening in this blog. Not that much happens, but that is not the point.

If there is any industry that is in dire need of a Scalable Architecture, it is the cell phone industry.

Case in point - There was a moderate earthquake in the Bay Area two days ago. Immediately after the vibration subsided, I pulled out my cell phone to check on my dear ones. And what do I get? A “network busy” signal. WTF? My first thought was that maybe one of the phone towers collapsed. Unlikely. Then it occurred that everybody in the Bay Area (that’s about 7 million) were trying to make calls simultaneously. And obviously the system broke down. It was not just my carrier (AT&T), they ALL collapsed.

Yes, these kind of situations don’t happen everyday. But when they do, tough luck! Just imagine if the seismic activity was a tad bigger? And while land lines are more reliable, they are irrelevant because it implies you (and your family) must be home and there is really no need to call. Cell phones are one of the, if not the, most important part of everyday life. What is the point of paying top dollars to your carrier if you cannot depend on them?

Moral of the story: Always have a contingency plan for your family - especially where to meetup in an emergency.