Indiana Jones Trilogy DVD Box Set
Indy on DVD in November. Finally!
Fat kid with a stick. Same fat kid with a light sabre. The second one is damn funny after the first.
I officially graduate from BIT this Friday. About 5 weeks ago, Jay, Kit, Pro and I decided to hold a pre-celebratory dinner at Tetsuya’s and thus, taking into account the requisite month-long waiting queue, made a booking there. Its reputation as Sydney’s most expensive, and arguably best, restaurant meant that it would be a unique experience to behold for plebs like us. It’s one of those things you only need to experience once to see, and taste, what others have been talking about. And thank goodness for that, because my bank account couldn’t take much more than one visit to Tet’s.
The day arrived last Saturday. After catching Shanghai Knights at the George St Hoyts (mediocre movie, best part was the outtakes at the end), we walked down to Tetsuya’s, which is directly behind the cinemas on Kent Street. It doesn’t look like a restaurant from the outside. From the street, you’re confronted with a sliding mechanical metal gate which leads through a small 5-space carpark ($20 parking) down to what looks like a security outpost manned by two burly guards in suits. The restaurant itself looks nothing like a restaurant, but would easily be misconstrued for some rich person’s house. By a case of contagious forgetfulness, no one could remember whether our booking was for 7 or 7.30pm, so at 6.30pm, we stood at the gateway debating whether to go in. The security guards opened the gate for us. We stood there for a while, motionless, still deciding what to do. They shut it again. We finally made up our minds and got them to open the gate for us again. After similar confusion with the booking time, Pro eventually arrived at 7.15pm. It’s a set degustation menu (apparently there are two variants of the menu, and which one you get depends upon which room you are seated in), so without further delay, dinner was served.
On the inside of Tet’s is a soothing mix of modern decor blended with a Japanese influence (not unlike the food). Abstract arty sculptures adorn pedestals, and even the male and female icons on the washroom doors evoked dinner table conversation. At 7pm the place was virtually empty, but there was a full house by 8pm.
The bread rolls were ordinary dinner rolls, but the butter for them was laced with parmesan and truffles. The menu contained 8 savoury courses, 4 sweet courses and 2 side dishes, totalling 12 courses. Servings were bite-sized, but by the end we were all extremely full. The meal was balanced, with most dishes being evaluated as “peculiar, but rather nice tasting”. I found it more pleasing than Rockpool, which tended to have a more strong and vibrant taste.
Hard to say what the highlight of the meal was, but Tetsuya’s signature dish, the ocean trout would’ve come close. The apple sorbet was sublime, as was the scallop and foie gras which just melted in the mouth. The taster dish with five servings (gazpacho, tuna, kingfish, venison and marron) was a palatable journey in itself. I don’t think I’ve described a meal like this before, and I feel like a pretentious tit for doing so, but it was quite exquisite. Combining all this with some terrific company, and it made for a terrific night.
The service was decent, though not perfect. For the first couple hours of the night, the waiter responsible for topping up our glasses seemed to be tripped up on speed because he’d liberally splatter a trail of water onto the table from one glass to another everytime, in his eagerness to move on to the next table. We requested a copy of the menu, but we had to remind them a second time to get it. Nonetheless, staff were generally attentive, and the rate at which courses arrived was well paced – enough time to digest and discuss, while not too much time so that we were looking around wondering if they’d noticed our plates had been empty for the last half hour.
It was five hours later, at about a quarter to midnight, when we eventually stumbled out of the restaurant and back into the real world, more than thoroughly satisfied. The standard meal is $170pp, with an extra $7 for the oysters, which were a special optional addition to the dinner on the night. Water is charged at $7pp, and we got a “cheap” bottle of wine (prices are double that of what you would pay outside). Add tip. The total damage was $210 per person.
Was it worth it? Absolutely. Go there on a special occasion, just to experience it once. (Because really, at that price you’re not there just for the food, but for the whole shebang.)
Menu
Oysters (from Bermagui and South of Hobart)
Caviar & Snow Egg Sandwich
Beetroot & Blood Orange SandwichGazpacho with Spiced Tomato Sorbet
Tartare of Tuna with Goat Curd & Wasabi
Marinated Fillet of Kingfish with Orange & Soy Jelly
Tataki of Venison with Rosemary & Honey
West Australia Marron Salad with AsparagusConfit of Petuna Tasmanian Ocean Trout Loin with Kombu, Celery & Daikon
Seasonal Green Salad
Lobster Ravioli with Shellfish Vinaigrette
Carpaccio of Scallop with Foie Gras & Lime
Twice-cooked De-boned Spatchcock with Shitake Mushrooms & Citrus Jus
Selection of Cheese & Fruit
Nashi Pear
Sorbet of Granny Smith Apple with Sauternes Jelly
Hazelnut Soup with Chocolate & Hazelnut Sorbet
Mocha Floating Island with Lemon Scented Anglaise
Coffee or Tea & Petit Four
Yen Industries has cheap hardware. Really cheap hardware. And I’m not saying that because I made the site and have a vested interest in the business :). (The site is new and probably still has bugs. A lot of the items are currently quite messily labelled, but that’s not my fault, I don’t provide the content. I’m sure it will improve in time though.) If you want to negotiate a better deal on something, just drop me an e-mail, tell me you came from this site, and I’ll see what I can do. If you need OCZ or Corsair RAM, you’ll honestly be hard pressed to find cheaper prices.
(Probably not of much interest to non-Aussies.)
Shish dropped me an e-mail. He’s working on a program to solve Target in the SMH. (With a given set of 9 letters, you must form as many 4+ letter words as possible. The word must contain a specific letter in the set, which is given.) In the process, he decided to divert a little and find out the longest words which can be typed with the left hand (commonly held to be stewardesses), right hand, and alternate hands (commonly held to be skepticisms). A largish dictionary file was used, so some of the words are likely to be quite obscure (findable only in the full Oxford dictionary, for example).
Results were:
Left hand (12): desegregated, desegregates, extravasated, extravasates, reabstracted, resegregated, resegregates, reverberated, reverberates, stewardesses, watercresses
Right hand (8): hokypoky, homonymy, hypopyon, illinium, lollipop, lollypop, millimho, milliohm, monopoly, nonunion, polonium, unholily
Alternate hands (13): neurotoxicity. Also (12): authenticity; (11) enchantment, skepticisms, ototoxicity, proficiency
That does it. I don’t care that it’s expensive, I’m sure it’s worth every cent. I’m going to start saving up for the new iPod. 30GB storage (doubles as a portable hard drive), full Windows compatibility, incredible size at 176g, alarm clock function, games, calendar, text storage, touch-sensitive buttons so no more moving parts, over 8 hour rechargeable battery life, Firewire and USB 2 connections. Excuse me, have to wipe the drool off my keyboard.
Haven’t seen a movie in a while, but this one was a good one. Better than the first, and they’ve introduced even more characters.
MSS is still alive and kicking on the Net.
The Economist has come out with an updated Big Mac Index. According to the index, the AUD is still around 30% undervalued. Despite the increase in the Aussie in recent months, Maccas hasn’t jacked the price up on the burger very much, so the the undervaluation hasn’t been “alleviated” too much.
New computer game pisses off Philip Ruddock. Rest of country amused.
“A federal judge in Los Angeles has handed a stunning court victory to file-swapping services Streamcast Networks and Grokster, dismissing much of the record industry and movie studios’ lawsuit against the two companies.” RIAA to appeal. (CNET Article) KaZaA not in the clear, but the judgment has very interesting implications.
If upheld, the decision could lead artists, record labels and movie studios to cast new legal strategies that they have until now been reluctant to try, including bringing lawsuits against individuals who copy unauthorized works over Napster-like networks. …
The judge’s surprise ruling marked the first validation of an argument that file-swapping supporters have been making since Napster’s first controversial arrival. Peer-to-peer file-trading is a technology that can be used for activities well beyond copyright infringement, and the technology should not be blocked altogether to stop solely its illegal uses, these backers have said.
In making that argument, the judge looked back to the landmark 1984 Supreme Court ruling that upheld the legality of Sony’s Betamax videocassette recorder (VCR). That decision helped establish the doctrine of “substantial noninfringing use,” which protects technology providers that distribute products–like the VCR or photocopier–that can be used for both legal and illegal purposes.
In the Napster case, the Betamax argument failed because the overwhelming majority of activity occurring on Napster was not substantially noninfringing. In this case, Morpheus and Grokster operate in a technically different way from Napster (decentralisation), and that the judge has also taken the future usefulness of this technology into account. Naturally, the parties will keep appealing until it gets to the Supreme Court, but that will take years.
The fund now stands at $170 after an equal first and second placing tonight.
The three students must have been trafficking a huge amount of MP3s to have been arrested over it… I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have an illegal MP3 (or hundred) on their computer.
Stumbled across this blog on… well… Asians in Sydney. Complete with picture of Leslie Cheung’s bloodstain.
3G services launched in Australia (well, two cities in Australia) with the arrival of Orange’s “3 Australia“. From a cursory look at what it offers, I’ve formed an opinion (that may not be all that well informed) that this new technology seems to be already plagued by two major problems that will impede its diffusion and adoption. One of the major marketing pushes of 3G networks is the ability to make video phone calls. Technology for the “modern” videophone has been around 1964, but practical considerations and lack of demand have not seen them become a common household object. Video conferencing is only starting to gain acceptance and use in the corporate world. However, I cannot see how video calls on mobile phones can be a major driver in the adoption of 3G technologies, apart from the initial gadget “wow” factor, which is in turn offset by the current affordability of 3G which I’ll look at in a moment. In terms of benefits of video calls, the ability to see someone while conversing implies a richer communications medium, due to the additional non-verbal cues of body language and facial expression and so on. When you are speaking to someone on a one or two inch screen, how much richer is that communication honestly going to be? Is it a novelty or truly useful? Add to this the inconvenience of having to look at who you are talking to whilst on the mobile, and you’ll not be so mobile if you want to talk on the run. Naturally you can choose to fall back to normal voice-only calls, but arguably you’d be doing that a fair bit, which defeats the purpose of video calls being a “main driver” for 3G technology adoption. Furthermore, there’s the social factor of not only you being able to see who you’re speaking to, but everyone else seeing who you’re speaking to, which can lead to reluctance to use this technology in public. Hence, usage is further reduced. Perhaps this will be something people get over as time allows society to adjust (in much the same way that mobile phones are commonplace, and PDAs are not beginning to raise as many eyebrows on public transport as they used to). Societal reaction will play a large part in all of this.
You may be whining about broadband caps now, but when Telstra Big Pond first arrived with cable about 5 years ago, access costs were $50 for the first 100MB and 17c per megabyte thereafter (or something of that magnitude – it was quite ridiculous). I, on my 28.8k dialup connection, was pulling through up to 5GB a month for about $50 a month. No one but the rich cared that they could download at 300kb/sec, because the fact was that you could tear through that in ten minutes and then the fun would be over. Then Optus arrived. In a similar vein, 3G boasts a large increase in wireless mobile bandwidth, opening up the door for all sorts of applications. However, when costs are charged at cents per kilobyte, costs become a major concern for the consumer. So whilst they may take comfort in the fact that the technology is available to them, if they don’t use it it’s little point. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve used WAP on my phone.
All this is not to say that I don’t think 3G is a bad thing. I applaud the quick development of 3G infrastructure in Australia by Hutchison/Orange, and recognise they need to recoop their extensive outlays. I’m of the mindset that you should build technology infrastructure with expandable capacity to be utilised in future, rather than reacting to the demands of the underlying uses of the technology (software and the like), especially as the underlying uses are part of an industry that expands so rapidly in its demands. However, with such a pricing scheme, I cannot see 3G taking off in the next few years, and a failure by 3 Australia in 3G may have negative consequences in terms of inducing the other mobile carriers to hesitate. In this regard, competition is terrific for consumers, especially in the diffusion of the technology. Further hampering efforts are that the Australian telecommunications industry is not well known for its competition producing vastly lower prices (our cable and ADSL caps must be among the lowest in the world).
From AJH: Read My Lips, lip-synching politicians to songs. See especially Bush and Blair sing Endless Love. Also, an Arts honours thesis on swearing.
From Natter: Projection technologies and optical camouflage. Still got a bit of work to do, but trust in the Japanese eh…
Instead of repeating the links here, Lime Jelly has posted a host of cool links (video of a chopper missing a ship landing, Zimbabwe petrol lines image and high-res Matrix trailer).
I got hacked yesterday. Well, not this site, but this one, which I designed. It was hacked by an anti-war group. Funny, that. (Image of the hack. 188kb.)
Update: The Federal police got called, then it turned out that the hack occurred server-wide at the US hosting company, so they called in the FBI. It seems like it’s just a coincidence that the anti-war message also happened to affect a Liberal web site.
A mate of mine has got himself a journal going (again): Drum him up some traffic.
Oops. Unfortunate timing for this Hong Kong tourism ad campaign.
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2:37pm (GMT +10.00) tomorrow 
