Subtle

Spotlight Coppa

An Italian small plate restaurant down the street. The ambiance is defined by the smells and dishes coming from the kitchen. It's all about the food. Dishes come to the table when they are ready. We started out with a fennel and olive plate, followed by lobster pizza. The girls had chicken and bagna cauda. I had pork ragu with homemade noodles. Before the long walk home, we shared a calamari pizza. Sorry for the less than flattering picture of my half eaten pasta plate , but I wanted to remember the beer. Oh yeah a few aperol spritzers were downed as well.
We will be back.

Double parked bikes

The Boston bicycle union had their meeting at the Benjamin Franklin Institution next door . Most people road a bike. Incredible display of single speeds.

Salon for a day

Our cell service was awesome today, look at those antennas!

Laughing gas injection...

Bruiser looks on...

Not on the bucket list

Right around the corner, but we think we will pass.

Biting my tongue

Today was open art gallery day in the south end. To be honest, I am not comfortable with art, as I don't understand it. The afternoon reinforced my fear. At one point it was not clear if an aluminum step ladder was part of the exhibit, or just there for maintenance. The next Picasso might be showing here, but It was all over my head.

What we are reading @ Nemo

A fascinating read that tracks 3 US high students, as they attend classes in the power house countries of education, South Korea , Finland and Poland.

Double parked

Pulley pendant

This wins the award for the most interesting light to look at and the
most ridiculous to hang.

Happy weekend

Beautiful morning in bean town

Hard to buy just one

Heirloom tomatoes @ Siena farms

New gutters

I prefer chocolate

Bananas Foster

I've always thought New Orleans had the best food in America, but last night I had bananas foster that topped anything I've had there. Perhaps we need to visit the crescent city just to make sure.
Besides good simple food, (think upscale pub food), we were entertained by a table o 20 something's next to us.
"What type of blueberry infused vodka do you have"
"None"
"How about light beer"
"Nope"
Returning from the bathroom a guy announced to the table there was only one restroom in the restaurant and it had the initials WC on it. He was told that stood for water closet, his response was, "I think a T for toilet would have been more clear"

Shout out to the old guys

The cowboy from Colorado looks to win the tour of Spain . Always questioned on his diet of junk food, clearly that seemed not to matter as he destroyed all the Spanish climbers on their home turf. Last day featured sections at 21 percent grade, that's twice rattlesnake, and the climb is 15k.

Legally not on the table

After my own heart

Playing in the street

When do you think I can bring down my chalk and introduce fractions?

Love in the Mouth

Love in the mouth. That phrase was used by a young Italian kid who was struggling with English trying to describe the wine his vineyard made. Sorry my command of English is not that good. Last night we walked 10 minutes to Erbaluce, voted Boston's top Italian restaurant, (much to the disappointment to the other 10,000 incredible Italian restaurants here)

If a restaurant had a gender, I would call this one female. The chef uses herbs to flavor dishes rather than spices. In fact the herbs are the star of the plate, the protein on the plate plays second fiddle. 

We met the chef at our favorite vegetable stand a few weeks ago, and he educated us on how to sauté a sunflower. I had the sunflower stuffed with herbed ricotta, Cindy had prosciutto with apricots. For the main course I enjoyed wild boar with a plum sauce, and Cindy had a fish with tomato/anchovy sauce. The menu changes nightly, as it should. Non dairy was not an issue as butter/cream was not a popular ingredient. The chef would adjust most any item to be non dairy.

At this level of restaurant you come to be entertained, as much as fed. We were definitely entertained, but both wished we had ordered a pasta. I hope to come back after the next we discover the next horizon of restaurants in our neighborhood.

Hello My Name is

One of the great things about this city, is that it oozes passion. Passionate people often flock together, and today I took the day off and walked to MIT to attend the  Open Hardware Summit. Basically 500 people from around the world came together to talk about hardware whose design is freely shared. Schematics, design specs, and documentation are all open and you are encouraged to tinker, extend, enhance, and put back in the community. Pretty much the opposite of today's culture.

The badge of course was a piece of open source hardware, and I was one of the few who did not have my badge hacked by the time I picked it up.

Examples:
A low cost piece of hardware that hangs in fruit trees to detect when the fruit is ready, of course it could alert the robot pickers to come to this tree. For now it just blinks lights so us humans can pick.

Next Up a drone that can deliver medicine to unreachable places. Much like the gift baskets in the Hunger Games. The cool thing is that it was printed on a 3D printer. You don't order the drone, you order the instructions for your printer to print one. The gal said it took 5 hours to print.

An amphibious robot snake that swims, climbs walls. Not sure the purpose, but a winner of a solution looking for a problem. It was a student design, and she had poster of how the hardware mimicked the spine of a snake. Perhaps it could do remote water sampling at Sodus.

My personal favorite was a low cost (< $1.00) RDID tag that you get when you enter a party. It encodes your name and the music you like. As people come and go the Robot DJ plays music that will please the current audience, and can personalize each song. "..And here goes an oldie for Fred"..

Too many home gadgets to name, but for sure lots of bright people are dreaming big.

Oh did I mention free lunch, sitting on the lawn at MIT on a spectacular day? Yes I bet I was the oldest in attendance.

Saweet