seize dave's stuff

I’m slowly building a collection of very nice watches, but the hole in my collection is a dressy, black-dial watch. This self-winding, 43mm diameter chronometer from Ulysse Nardin is near the top of my list of choices. It would be the priciest watch in my collection at $8,400 MSRP, but man, is it nice.

This version has a stainless steel case, a black leather strap with deployment clasp, sapphire crystal, and a 42 hour power reserve. As you can see from the picture above, it also has a small seconds dial, a date indicator, and a power reserve indicator.

I’m fortunate to have a Ulysse Nardin reseller right down the street. It’s takes all my self control not to wander in and buy it every time I walk by.

Ulysse Nardin Maxi Marine Chronometer

Last week, I won a trophy for the spiciest chili for the third time in four years. It’s not a bad track record, and each year I feel as though my chili gets better. For those chili fans out there, I’ve decided to share a recipe that is similar to my competition chili. This is my personal favorite - a three bean chicken chili. If you decide to try it, I’d love to hear your feedback.

Ingredients

2 lbs chicken, cubed

1 large white onion, peeled and diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

4 fresh jalapenos, minced

4 fresh red savina habaneros, minced

2 15 oz cans diced tomatoes, drained

1 15 oz can red kidney beans, drained

1 15 oz can black beans, drained

1 15 oz can cannellini beans, drained

1 tbl ground cumin

1 tbl ground cayenne pepper

1 tsp dried oregano

1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

1 tsp salt (or to taste)

Tips

Protip: Use gloves when chopping up the peppers. I’m nearly immune to the effects of chili peppers, but the oil will soak into your skin, and no amount of washing it will remove it. Your hands may not hate you, but your eyes will for the next two days.

Protip: This will be spicy. If you prefer your chili less spicy, seed the peppers first. Alternately, experiment with other, less spicy, but equally tasty peppers.

Protip: For the love of all that’s holy, don’t buy pre-minced garlic in a jar. It’s a crime against the onion family.

Protip: Dried, ground spices keep for about three to six months in an airtight container in a dark cupboard. After that point, the essential oils dissipate, and your ground spices start to taste like dust. Throw them out and start over.

Also, when purchasing new spices, don’t buy from the normal spice aisle in the grocery store - the one that’s normally near the baked goods or the instant mashed potatoes. You’re paying about two to three times more than you should. Go to the ethnic/international aisle in the store. You’ll find the same quality spices for about half the price.

If you don’t have an ethnic/international aisle, find an equivalent store. They’re filled with wonderful spices for people who actually cook with spices on a regular basis.

Directions

1. Sweat the onions and garlic in a skillet over medium heat until the onions have turned translucent and taken on a nice golden color.
2. Combine all of the ingredients in a crock pot. Cook on high for 2 hours, then turn to low and let cook for another hour. Your cooking time may vary, depending on your model and relative volume of your crock pot. Stir no more than once per hour. Any more than that, and you’re letting valuable heat out by lifting the lid.
3. Serve with your favorite accoutrement. Sour cream and cheese will help cut the heat, for the heat averse.
4. Enjoy!

My ink collection keeps growing, and the organizer I have for them currently is beyond full - it’s about to start overflowing. As I was juggling ink bottles yesterday, I began thinking - if I had to downsize my collection (as opposed to finding a bigger space to store them, which is what I’m actually going to do), what inks would I keep?

I’ve narrowed it down to five:

J. Herbin 1670 - I like red inks, and this is my absolute favorite. It’s gorgeous in every pen I own, and it is easy to read and write with.

Noodler’s Kung Te-Cheng - My current blue ink favorite. It’s the color of sapphires dipped in indigo, it dries relatively quickly, and it’s bulletproof.

J. Herbin Poussiere de Lune - This purple ink with grey tones writes nicely, and is of a character that is appropriate for business. It’s also easy to read and behaves well on most paper.

Iroshizuku Momiji - My second favorite red ink. It possesses a much lighter feel than the J. Herbin 1670.

Pelikan Blue Black - The newest ink in my collection is now one of my favorites. It’s a dryer ink, so it does wonders to tame the wet writing pens in my collection. It’s also a pretty blue with moderate shading.

If you had to pare down your ink collection to five, which ones would you save?

Much has been discussed about Ecosystem’s commitment to producing a green notebook. The bright, white, 100% post-consumer, recycled paper by New Leaf Paper is prepared using a chlorine-free bleaching process and printed with a soy-based ink. It has an organic cotton bookmark, and the cover is coated with a water-based acrylic.

Additionally, all of the components are sourced in the United States, which cuts down on the cost and carbon emission of transportation. Even the binding, sewing, and cutting are done in a facility with an ecological savings program.

However, their commitment to producing sustainable and ecologically sound products would be for naught if the books themselves weren’t any good. Fortunately, they’re great.

In November of 2009, I purchased a medium, hardback, author (ruled) notebook from Barnes & Noble, and I’ve been using it as my writing journal since. It is exactly the same size and shape as a large Moleskine journal, though it is thicker due to its heavier weight paper. I purchased mine in “lagoon,” which is Ecosystem’s term for their light, sea-blue color covers.

One of the odd things about the Ecosystem line is that certain combinations of size, cover type, and internal paper are only available in certain colors. The medium hardback author notebook at the time of purchase was only available in lagoon (blue), watermelon (pink), and onyx (black). The artist (blank) book was available in kiwi (green), though, and the same size was available in a flexi-cover in clementine (orange). Ecosystem has recently added grape (purple) to their lineup as well – but only in certain combinations. It’s as odd approach, as I’m sure I’m not the only one who wants an orange, ruled hardback.

Ecosystem has adopted the Moleskine form factor for their books, which appeals to me. They feature rounded corners, a pocket in the back, a sewn-in bookmark, and an elastic band. I have noticed that the elastic bands on these books hold up better than their Moleskine counterparts, and don’t stretch out over time. The bookmark is not as long as Moleskine bookmarks, but it’s plenty big enough to do its job – I haven’t had any trouble with it in the six months I’ve been writing in it.

The front endpapers feature a distinctive leaf pattern, some explanatory text about Ecosystem’s mission and a space to record your name and contact information. The back features the same leaf pattern, the previously mentioned paper pocket, and a unique code with a special purpose. This code can be entered on the Ecosystem website to register one’s notebook, so that if it is ever lost, it can be used to contact the owner. Also, one can see the components that went into one’s individual book – and the environmental savings from it manufacture.

The binding in the hardback notebooks is sewn, so the book lies mostly flat. I say “mostly” because of my major quibble with the book – where most of the signatures meet, a bit of adhesive creeps up between the pages, locking them together near the spine. The adhesive never spreads more than a quarter inch, so the pages are entirely usable – but it’s a bit annoying when the rest of the book performs so admirably.

The paper itself is fairly smooth, though not as smooth as Clairefontaine or Moleskine paper; I have had no difficulty writing on the paper for long stretches of time. The author journal is ruled from edge to edge – the narrow rule provides for 32 lines per page, with a half-inch margin at the top and bottom. The ink itself is neither too bold nor too light – I find it just right for ease of use.

Ecosystem’s notebooks have microperferated pages, of which I was initially skeptical. One of the reasons that I prefer hardback covers is that I’m concerned about preserving the integrity of the book – I throw my notebooks in my bag every day, so they need to be rugged. However, the perforations strike just the right balance – there’s little danger of the paper separating without intentionally doing so, and when you do need to remove a page, it’s easy to accomplish, and a lot friendlier than trying to tear a page out of a Moleskine.

In fact, the perforated pages came in very, very handy when I was at my brother’s wedding, and used the notebook to write up my best man’s toast. After I’d written several drafts, I was able to cleanly and easily tear out the page with the final draft. It worked out marvelously.

So how does the Ecosystem paper stand up to fountain pen ink? The answer, it turns out, depends on the ink. Generally, the paper handles ink well – it is thick enough that show-through is very, very low and bleed-through is generally non-existent. Ecosystem paper is very, very absorbent, though – it drinks ink like it is going out of style – so, thin, easy-flowing inks like J. Herbin and Iroshizuku tend to feather more and produce a bolder line than they do on Rhodia or Moleskine paper. Also, it appears that one side of the paper feathers ever so slightly more than the other – no doubt an artifact of the manufacturing process. 

However, using thicker inks like Noodler’s and Private Reserve on this paper is a revelation. I’d never been a fan of Noodler’s inks, in particular, because of their very long drying time on Moleskine notebooks – the ink can take upwards of a minute to dry. As a result, I found myself at odds with other fountain pen users who love Noodler’s – and reported no trouble with drying time. When I finally tried the ink on Ecosystem, though, I felt like I’d reached a new level of understanding when it comes to pen and ink. On this paper, Noodler’s and Private Reserve inks dry almost instantaneously – three to five seconds at the most. Additionally, because those two brands of ink are very resistant to feathering, they don’t suffer from the same level of “bold-ing” that other inks do on this paper.

I can’t recommend this combination of paper and ink enough. Ecosystem notebooks have opened up a whole segment of the ink market to me that I’d previously been avoiding, which, for someone who likes ink as much as I do, is a wonderful gift. Ecosystem products have become my preferred notebooks.

Ecosystem is a brand of Sterling Publishing, which is itself a wholly owned subsidiary of Barnes & Noble. Therefore it is unsurprising that I first found the Ecosystem books in my local Barnes & Noble. It appears that they are beginning to appear in other bookstores as well, and they are readily available online at the Barnes & Noble website or at the Ecosystem website itself.

Ecosystem: http://www.ecosystemlife.com/

The fine folks at Ecosystem put out a call for people to hack their large notebooks in service of creating an iPad cover. I volunteered, and a large, flexi-cover, lagoon notebook showed up at my door a few weeks ago. I finally got a chance to play with the notebook today, and I think the hack turned out well.

Below is the ecosystem notebook with the iPad. The notebook is almost exactly the same shape and size and the iPad - it is about a quarter inch taller and about an eighth of an inch narrower.

The first step was to cut the signatures away from the cover. The very first and last notebook pages were affixed to the endpapers, so I was able to use a utility knife to slice just behind them. I also discovered that the blue, fabric ribbon was attached to the inside of the spine using some sort of double-sided tape. It came off easily once I had the book disassembled.

Here you can see the iPad sitting in its new home. Because it is slightly thicker than the iPad, the notebook has enough leeway to make up for the narrower width.

The next step was to figure out how to affix the iPad to the notebook. I decided to cut the bookmark in half and use it to create holders for the corners. Below, you can see the iPad with the bookmarks in place.

Here’s the rear view - I was able to thread the bookmarks through the back of the cover, and then knot them to prevent them from slipping back through the notches I made.

And here’s the finished cover, iPad safely tucked inside. I was worried that the flexi-cover wouldn’t be sturdy enough to stand up to the weight of the iPad, but the result is surprisingly secure. Thanks, Ecosystem!

After having read Mira Grant’s fabulous work of zombie fiction, FEED (read my preliminary review here), in which a terrible virus extracts an even more terrible toll on the world at large, I found myself on a virology kick and decided to read the new book, Superbug, by Maryn McKenna. The story of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (known by its acronym, MRSA) might not, at first blush, seem that exciting when compared to Grant’s captivating horror fiction. Well, let me assure you that MRSA is far more terrifying than any zombie.

McKenna, a medical journalist, traces the evolution of the antibiotic resistant version of the very common bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus (one in three of us carries it around on a daily basis without ever developing symptoms), and its surprising jump from being an infection that only very sick people pick up in the hospital to a bug that destroys the lives of very healthy people who contract it from otherwise innocuous sources.

When I say destroy, I’m being kind. MRSA is a nasty bacteria that does horrible things to the human body. McKenna doesn’t shy away from descriptions of infection and the often Herculean surgical procedures needed to drain, clean, and otherwise remove said infection from the body. It’s not pretty, and might upset you if you’re squeamish or overly empathetic.

In medicine, there are lots of acronyms and long words that are often difficult to pronounce. McKenna manages to keep the jargon to a minimum and does an excellent job of explaining the rest. She deftly combines scientific explanations with the compelling and frightening stories of MRSA victims, never once leaving the reader adrift.

Superbug is one of those books that are impossible to put down. It is smart, tragic, frightening, and expertly written. It also happens to be of practical importance in our hyper medicalized world. MRSA kills more people every year than AIDS, but most people know next to nothing about it. Every parent, spouse, and child stands to benefit from learning about the role that this disease increasingly plays in all of our lives, and in learning to spot the warning signs early.

My only frustration with the book is that, practically speaking, it is a work in progress. It was written as a warning – to educate us that the threat is still present – and while McKenna follows the story of MRSA through most of 2009, the bacteria is still evolving at a rapid rate. For the reader, that means that we are left without a satisfactory conclusion. The fight against MRSA continues, so there is hope – but in the end, I’m left with a deep sense of foreboding and an even stronger desire to wash my hands.

Buy Superbug

Read the Superbug Blog

FEED is a book about living with zombies. More precisely, it is about living in a near future where zombies have appeared and the world has entered into an uneasy equilibrium with them. The protagonists are young bloggers who are chosen to cover a presidential campaign; for them, the break that propels them into the big leagues - and a step up from poking zombies with sticks on camera.

The author, Seanan McGuire, writing as Mira Grant, paints a convincing and thorough picture of life after the Rising. The story, told from the point of view of Georgia Mason (the name George, after George Romero, and its derivatives are the most common names for the children of the initial outbreak’s survivors), can be a little heavy on exposition, is rife with pop culture references (bloggers that poke zombies with sticks are called Irwins, after Steve Irwin the Crocodile Hunter; those that publish opinion backed up by fact are called Stewarts, after John Stewart of the Daily Show), and at times veers off into overly colloquial territory, but is otherwise entertaining and easy to read.

This is the first novel-length work of fiction I’ve read since Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother, to which I credit the author’s Big Idea piece on John Scalzi’s blog. Combined with a set of sample chapters delivered wirelessly to my Kindle, I was grabbed and pulled right in, just like the victims of the zombies that inhabit the book’s world. I’m only 20% in so far, so if it goes pear shaped later on, don’t blame me. So far, though, FEED is keeping me completely entertained.

If you’re at all like me, and you have limited time to surf the internet, but unlimited curiosity, you’ll inevitably come across articles in your daily browsing that you’d like to read but just don’t have the time for when you encounter them. There are a number of less than ideal solutions to this problem. I used to bookmark articles with the intent of reading them later and would end up with bookmark overload. Or I’d keep them in mind and then promptly forget about them until weeks later when I would think to myself – “self, I think I saw an article about that once.” I needed a solution that allowed me to store the articles for later use – like lying on the couch at home, or visiting the, um, “reading room.”

It turns out that there is a solution to that problem, and its name is Instapaper.

Instapaper is, at its most basic, a website that allows you to save articles for later reading. You begin by creating an account and adding a bookmarklet to the bookmark bar of your favorite browser. Then, as you wander across things that you’d like to read later, Instapaper scans through the article and very intelligently saves a lightweight text version of that article to your account. You can later come back to the Instapaper site to read the article in full – either through your standard browser or through the mobile browser on your favorite smart phone.

However, the full power of Instapaper becomes evident when you download the iPhone/iPod or iPad reader. These very handy applications download the text of your article to your mobile device, which allows you to then read wherever and whenever you actually have time to read, and in a very comfortable manner. It is, like the application suggests, your very own instant newspaper.

The application remembers your place in each article as you switch between apps and between articles, and then, when you’re finished, you can move an article from your “Read Later” list to your “Archived” list. You can even create folders to sort your “ideas to work into a book” from your “articles about funny animals.”

Instapaper also has a beta Kindle and ePub file that can be downloaded and synched to your device, as well as a “print” version for those so technically inclined.

I highly recommend Instapaper as a service. The website is free, and there is a free version of the iPhone app, though it is limited to 10 articles at a time. The full version of the iPhone/iPad universal app is only $4.95 – a sum I consider very well spent, considering the amount of use I get from it. Instapaper is officially one of the Things I Like, and I bet you’ll like it, too.

http://www.instapaper.com/