Block party

Halloween is huge here. Blocked off street for kids. A kids band, petting Zoo, and bouncy ball house.

Information overload

Check this screen shot out of game 5 of the World Series. It makes watching tv so simple.
Pretty soon we are going to need multiple monitors for a baseball game. One for the game, another showing all the stats, and another for all the twitter feeds. Minus the actual game this is what this app does. We had the game audio on as well. Really this is the essence of the game.

And here is Cindy's dinner

Yum

Headed out to Harry's. You remember, the place whose owner gave Cindy the antique chandelier. Anyway it's open to the public now.
In Cindy's words.
"I can't imagine this dish being any better, 10 out 10". She had scallops over home made pasta and vegies.
I had fried chicken, mash taters and greens, but star of plate were 3 savory doughnuts. Yep fried dough with spice and herbs. Hush puppies are so one dimensional compared to these.

Everything is better together

Sunday morning run...

Roasted fresh tomato marinara

oil any sort of roasting pan (glass, aluminum, steel)

About 8 medium tomatoes rough cut
2 white onions rough cut
1 carrot finely grated
1/2 head peeled and crushed garlic
Salt/pepper
Dash of cayenne pepper
Fresh herbs
Roast at 400 for about an hour until most of the liquid has evaporated
Immersion blend to desired consistency

Recipe is from Betty Ann

Not all poetry is great

Sorry, fall is the greatest season, and October is perhaps the best month.

Dog walkers

The competing goals of wanting a pet and a full time job have given life to the career of a professional dog walker. You give these people keys to your house so they can take fido and multiple friends out for their daily walks. Looking at the prices they command, it could be a wonderful career.

Fall abundance

Bagpipes

Today we heard bagpipes. They were close. We headed outside to watch the apparent parade, but we were greeted by police officers who had blocked off Berkeley street. The mood was serious, not festive. Today the Boston police placed a plaque to commemorate the death of officer Tommy Gill, who was killed in the line of duty in February 1988. The mayor, chief of police and several officers gave short talks about officer Gill's Marine corp service and detective career. Our little corner was chosen as it used to be the location of the police precinct.

Must be the water

Come on patriots!

Go Sox!

Well the Ducks in the Garden are headed to the game. Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack, and Quack are all dressed up in their red beards to cheer in game one of the World Series.
Thanks to the Globe for the photo, and thanks to Robert McCloskey for a wonderful story.

Pavlovian response

The radiators start pinging and turning warm around 7am. Bruiser hops to window to get warm. Hmmm I wonder if I record the pinging and play it back, would he jump to the window?
Results will be posted soon.

Peri-Peri Paella

The secret to having no leftovers is to cook small amounts in individual dishes. No leftovers is the penultimate goal of the kitchen.
Just as Columbus was not the first to discover America, but the last person to discover America, I suspect the Anchor Bar in Buffalo was the last restaurant to discover chicken wings. Peri-Peri sauce is a combination of peppers, vinegar and herbs. It looks and smells like chicken wing sauce, and has been around since the 1500s. Its reported that Columbus brought the peppers back from his voyage to the Americas, so perhaps he was the first to discover chicken wing sauce. Its a bit more herbal and less vinegary than the traditional stuff. Here I marinated shrimp in the sauce and added them to rice/tomato/chorizo sausage. One pan, one meal.

Big Data @Nemo

The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

"Big Data" Do a google search and you will get about 2 million hits, yes the term is popular. Basically big data is capturing lots of data points for a process, so that you can reason about the process and make predictions about future events based on historical trends. The stock market, patient response to therapy, crime trends, and shopping trends all examples of how people are using historical data to predict future events. If you are really interested I highly recommend taking Stephen Ng class on Machine Learning. He is a rock start in this world, and will teach you the methods to find the signal in the noise.

Well at nemo we are also on the Big Data bandwagon. We have our super fast computers analyzing large data sets to make predictions. I have chosen the tricky problem of weather. I've been fortunate enough to live in several different climates, Macon, Rochester, and now Boston. I am pretty much temperature agnostic, but I do like the sunshine. So who has more sunshine? Sure I could go out to the data bases and get the number of days of sunshine in each location, but I want to verify they are correct.

Below is our water cooled computer analyzing current weather conditions from these three locations.

Basically it wakes up 6 times a day, goes to Yahoo and asks for the cloud cover at each location. Records this and sends  the data to a free online graphing service. Ok we are one week into the process, so its difficult to draw any conclusion thus far. You should be able to click on this link in the future and see the graph of historical sunshine. As of today, Macon about 50 percent of the days are sunny, Boston about 40 percent, and Huron about 30.

The last graph is the temperature of the computer over the same time period. At a months scale it is hard to see but there is a pattern of when the sun is on the device, when it wakes up and when the heat turns on.  Here is a screen shot of the computer temperature this morning, you can see the slight rise in its temperature when the radiator turned on.

Peppers ready to be roasted

Snapped this photo at the pizza shop

Head of the Charles

Yesterday we walked down to the river (not around the corner) to watch the boat races. 300,000 people and seemingly about as many boats. It was a choppy 3 mile run up the Charles into a headwind. A beautiful classic event.

Church to homes

We went on a home tour today. One of the stops was an old church they are turning into large (4000 sq ft) condos. One includes the bell tower. Parking under ground. They expect to be done next spring.

Saturday morning

The Boston book festival is going on this weekend. We are attending a free talk just around the corner.

Brave New World

Not sure if you remember the bar scene in the movie Star Wars, but today I experienced a similar alien environment. Today I went to get my hair cut at a hair salon on Newbury St. Upon entering I knew something was up when I asked if I wanted a cappuccino or perhaps sparking water. At my barber they sell fishing lures, so I was caught off guard a bit. Uh no I'm good. 

Women were dressed in open toe boots. Yep, wearing boots, but open toes, perhaps they had extracted the piece of metal protection found in some boots, you know if a concrete block falls on your foot, at least the cut will be clean. Interesting tattoos, in interesting places. Apparently on their home planet its ok to have a open stomach blouse to show your blossom tattoo centered on your belly button.

I adapted, but couldn't help but wonder what planet the clients were from: 

(Real conversation, but made up names)

Stylist: So Higgs what can we do for you today?

Higgs: I think my hair needs more dimensions, I am tired of uh this, pointing to her head.

Stylist: Yes I know exactly what mean, more dimension is the newest thing.

Taylor's Thoughts: Lady, we all get 3 dimension, no more, no less, well at least in my universe.

Stylist: So Lisa how do you want your hair?

Lisa: I want it short but to look long.

Stylist: Perfect

Taylor's Thoughts: Hmm, perhaps in her universe you can look different than you actually are.  Ah a new application for google glasses, you can program them so that when someone looks at you, you appear different, hey and each person could see a different version of you. 

I did have a good conversation with the person cutting my hair. We talked about robots, since I was sure he had robots on his home planet. I told him I was worried that robots would soon take over, but I was pretty sure a hair stylist would not succumb to the robot uprising anytime soon. His work was like a sculptor and required finesse and an imagination. He cocked his head as if was processing this. Yikes maybe he was a robot. 

I just closed my eyes and wondered what was going on at work. Work all of sudden made sense.

Go Sox

Thanks to Stan Grossfeld and the Globe for the memory!

Sunday stroll

Pretty view from the storrow lagoon, along the Charles river

Reading the Sunday news....

And breaking house rules. Life is good.

Lunch on the roof

Oct 11th, still eating outside

They don't make em like they used to

Walking home from a stroll in the park we stumbled upon the choral evensong @ the Trinity church.
The outside beauty of the church is only surpassed by the inside.
Next week is the boys choir from Denmark.

Tacky people live here too

Road Trip

Today we headed south to Providence to meet up with some cycling friends and watch a few races. It was a hoot. Unfortunately almost everyone we knew crashed out, and they will have a long sore ride back to Rochester. 

Here is a short slow motion video

http://youtu.be/ew6_zObzNz0

Back Bay Harry's

Walking back from the post office, we came across the soon to be opening restaurant Back Bay Harrry's. We peaked in and Harry invited us in, and gave us the grand tour. It will not open until late next week, but the cooks were busy doing a trial lunch, and most of the tables and bar were set up. He encouraged us to look at the menu.  I found this link that outlined the chef and menu.

The chandeliers original to the building were rewired and hung, but did not work out. Cindy of course loved them, and Harry graciously offered us one to take home. It should look great in the spare bedroom. 

Brilliant

Some towns have horses. We have pianos scattered about town. I felt like we were in Paris in the 30s

Thank you

Thanks to the beer fairy ( you know who you are) we finally got some decent beer here

Happy birthday Cindy

Birthday dinner @ The Gallows Restaurant. Across the street from the cathedral . Comfort food at its finest.
Pork schnitzel, cider braised short ribs, turnips, and a baked hen. Yep we ate it all, after a 6 mile walk.

Slow news day

We took the day off and did tourist type of things. We went to the 50th floor of the prudential building. I highly recommend the view. We could locate our little condo and had a cool view of the top of building we normally have from the street. I have attaches the top and bottom view.

The theme of much of the floor display was about immigration and how Boston was a Mecca for those from other countries. One in six immigrants came through Boston

Bargain

We do eat well

Open faces bologna sandwich

Walk up and play

Some cities have horses, we have 75 pianos throughout the city that are free for all to play.

iPhone candid shots

A very special day

Congratulations K&V!