Online Resource

Online Resource

Dewey Library - RC552.E18 L473 2019

Online Resource

Online Resource

Online Resource

ACS Award In Chromatography.

Pastelike silver dendrites generated on aluminum foil and transferred to Scotch tape serves as a substrate for SERS.

Researchers develop an MS shotgun proteomic method to tackle small numbers of cancer cells in blood.

This year’s pittcon aims to be the most comprehensive conference and exposition on laboratory science.

Researchers detect and quantitate unlabeled chemical toxins with a portable device.

Nanoparticles open scattering technique to new applications.

A nanostructured immunosensor measures IL-6 concentrations as low as 0.5 pg/mL.

Inexpensive inkjet printers and scanners enable big advances in the small world of UTLC.

Raman spectroscopy, phase contrast microscopy, and optical trapping are combined to gain information with high temporal resolution.

Chemists launch research efforts to probe aerosols from Eyjafjallajokull's eruption.

When you think of a pattern library (or design system), what analogy comes to mind? Lego? If I had a Lego piece for every time somebody used Lego as a pattern library analogy, I’d be able to build the Death Star.

Lego is pretty awesome but also difficult to replicate a design without detailed piece-by-piece instructions.

Someone hands you a box of Lego and tells you to build an interface and that it has to look like the rest of the site. What are the chances that you’ve built something that is technically consistent with what others have done? Did you use two 4x2 bricks, or one 4x2 and two 2x2 bricks? Did you use green bricks or yellow bricks?

Lego gives you plenty of options but very little consistency.

In reality, pattern libraries usually hit an upper limit of around 100 components. Salesforce’s Lightning has 85 components. Shopify’s Polaris has 90. Anything more than that and interfaces become unwieldy. Each component is something that the designer has to design, the developer has to build and maintain, the user has to learn to use.

The combinations with which these components fit together are also limited. A Toast message is generally only going to appear in one or two places within the interface.

Tetris, on the other hand? A limited set of pieces that fit together in a particular set of ways. Sometimes you screw it up and it looks a bit wonky. Other times, when it all comes together, magic happens!

Now that’s the best analogy ever.

It’s been an interesting year, to say the least. Started a new job. Left that job. Ended a relationship. Have a newfound affinity for Islay Scotch. (Those last two things aren’t related, surprisingly.) Throughout this tumultuous year, there has been adventures to many amazing restaurants around the world.

The main goal was to continue on the quest to eat at 50 of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants before I turn 50. Last year, I managed to make it to 10 restaurants. This year, I went to 17 restaurants on the list. That means I’m over the halfway point of this crazy challenge in just under two years.

This year kicked off with a trip to London in January where I came down with a severe bout of something viral and was bedridden for a bit. Not quite fully recovered, I stupidly went to the four restaurants I had reservations at: The Clove Club, Lyle’s, The Ledbury, and Dinner by Heston Blumenthal.

In April, a trip to Peru was to include three restaurants on the list. We went to Maido and Astrid & Gaston. Sadly, we couldn’t get reservations to Central due to some confusion with the online booking site. Instead, we went to its sister restaurant, Kjolle, which ended up being amazing. Like, how is this restaurant not on the list itself?!

In May, we made a road trip out of it, driving to Zwolle, in the Netherlands to go to De Librije. After an amazing meal and stay at the attached hotel, we drove to Ghent, Belgium for a brief stay to go to Hof Van Cleve.

Midway through the year, the 2019 list came out, adding Atelier Crenn and Benu from San Francisco to the list. Benu was visited the year prior, so I took the easy win.

Side Challenge

I had a secondary goal of going to every Michelin 3-starred restaurant in the Bay Area. This included Saison, Benu, Quince, and Coi in San Francisco—all of which I had been to in 2018. There is Manresa down in Los Gatos (which I also went to in 2018), The Restaurant at Meadowood (also visited in 2018) up in Napa Valley, and the French Laundry that is also up in Napa Valley. In 2019, Michelin added SingleThread and Atelier Crenn to the ranks of 3-star restaurants.

That means, I had three restaurants to go to to complete the side quest. It also meant adding one more to the 50 list. In July, I went to Atelier Crenn, SingleThread, and French Laundry in a single weekend.

Thomas Keller, of the French Laundry, was a consultant on the movie Ratatouille, which set my expectations high. I really wanted them to serve the dish from the movie, but sadly, it didn’t happen. The meal was still wonderful, though.

Side challenge completed.

Autumn

I wanted to make another big jump for the 50 list. Getting a restaurant here or there just wasn’t going to cut it. There are five restaurants on the list in Paris. I managed to snag reservations at four of the five to be within three days of each other: Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athénée, Arpège, Alléno Paris au Pavillon Ledoyen, and Astrance. (I seemed to have forgotten about Septime, which is unfortunate.)

Paris is also where I learned of a whisky speakeasy hidden under a sake bar. Absolutely amazing. I already want to go back.

Last year, for Thanksgiving, we took Kitt’s parents to Copenhagen to have dinner at Geranium. This year, we took them to Barcelona. Disfrutar and Tickets were the primary targets, inching us further along the Fifty quest. Barcelona is a hotbed of molecular gastronomy. It was home to elBulli, run by Ferran Adria, well known as the creator of culinary foam. Former chefs from the restaurant started Disfrutar. Ferran’s brother, Albert, has since created a collection of restaurant within a stone’s throw of each other including Enigma and Pakta, which we also managed to get reservations to.

Enigma ended up being the most interesting of the bunch—and maybe the most challenging, too. Dishes included hare brain and squid head. There was also some foie gras, which I personally enjoy. Enigma was fascinating as it moved us through six stations and about 30 courses of food, including a speakeasy at the end.

One last Fifty adventure of the year was a trip to Buenos Aires for Don Julio, a steakhouse, and Tegui, a more “traditional” upscale restaurant with a tasting menu. Of course, I discovered that there’s a Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants list that’s done by the same people who do the World’s list. As such, I made reservations for Mishiguene and Chila.

Mishiguene was a neat experience. It’s very casual but they did a tasting menu that was filling and flavourful. The portions were huge and felt like it could’ve fed a table of four. Chila ended up being the highlight of the trip with great service and amazing dishes. I felt like it deserves to be on the World’s 50 Best.

Ending the year past the halfway mark on the 50 by 50 adventure was very satisfying—and very filling.

Side Adventures

The side adventures have been a lot of fun, too.

With frequent trips to Portland, I’ve tried to get to many of the nice restaurants there and have been delightfully impressed. A return visit to Le Pigeon, for example, wasn’t as gut-busting as the first time I went but was still delicious. I’ve also been to DOC, Beast, Coquine, and Nodoguro. Not to mention the love I have for Bamboo Sushi.

Canada has its own Top 100 list with a handful of restaurants right here in Ottawa: Atelier, who’s head chef once worked at Alinea in Chicago; Riviera; Stofa; and Fauna. Atelier is definitely the fanciest of the bunch but I prefer the slightly more casual experience at the other places. Fauna has been consistent both times I’ve gone. Not on the list are places like Whalesbone and Aperitivo, which were also quite good. It’s nice to see Ottawa’s food scene expand.

Next Year

2020 will bring many more food adventures as I attempt to get to another 15 restaurants or so on the way to completing the 50.

Completing the second half of this adventure gets harder as the restaurants are fewer and farther between.

I already have reservations to Noma, which has returned to Copenhagen after being closed for a couple years. I’m hoping to also do a side trip to Maaemo in Oslo and Frantzen in Stockholm around the same time, which will require short flights from city to city.

I’d like to get to Tokyo, which has three restaurants on the list. Maybe add on an extension to Hong Kong to do the two restaurants there.

Probably the most ambitious will be planning out the possibility of two other trips.

One, to northern Italy. There are three restaurants: Le Calandre, Piazza Duomo, and the venerable Osteria Francescana. But there’s also Hisa Franko that’s a two and a half hour drive to the east, in Slovenia; and Mirazur, that’s a three hour drive to the west, in France. A one or two week road trip through the north of Italy sounds incredible.

The other, equally ambitious adventure, would be a trip to northern Spain, split between Bilbao and San Sebastian, to go to Asador Etxebarri, Nerua, Mugaritz, Elkano, Azurmendi, and Arzak.

Were I able to pull off all four of these trips as desired, I’d be at 46 of the 50 restaurants by the end of the year. Crazy.

Those would be amazing trips, for sure. At the same time, part of the fun of trying to tackle this list is heading off to places I haven’t been before—especially in out-of-the-way places. Hof Van Cleve, sitting out in the middle of rolling green hills, took me to a place I never would’ve picked. Trips to Lima and Buenos Aires were also new adventures to cities and countries I hadn’t been before.

As such, the places that excite me are places like Bangkok, Moscow, and Istanbul.

Onwards

Who knows what, exactly, the new year will bring. I just consider myself lucky to be this far along this journey and hope the new year brings many new adventures.

As one might expect in trying to go to numerous restaurants around the world, much travel would ensue. And sure enough, that happened.

In 2019, I travelled to:

• Montreal (twice)
• Toronto (twice)
• Pittsburgh
• Portland (thrice)
• Phoenix
• Austin
• Atlanta
• San Antonio
• San Francisco (twice)
• Napa Valley
• London
• Lima
• Paris (twice)
• Amsterdam, with a drive to Zwolle and Ghent, Belgium
• Barcelona
• Buenos Aires

Some of my favourite memories, in no particular order.

I’ve never been a fan of Formula racing but a friend of mine is. I’ve known him since I was a teenager and he was my first roommate when I moved out at the tender age of 18. We went to Montreal to watch the race. He loved it. He even ran into Mitsou.

Made a trip the following weekend back to Montreal with my mom to have dinner in complete darkness.

My eldest son and I were supposed to go to Tokyo but our trip got cancelled. We ended up going to Toronto to see his favourite comedian: Fluffy! And then we went for his favourite food: Ramen! I enjoyed giving him that experience.

I got sick in London. Got to chat with the chefs at The Clove Club and The Ledbury.

Drove the Dutch and Belgian countrysides in search of food. Driving down a lane flanked by rolling green fields on the way to Hof Van Cleve. It was so picturesque, we had to pull to the side to take pictures.

Found a Cuban-themed bar in Lima and enjoyed a couple good drinks before it got too loud.

Sat on the rooftop of a restaurant in Napa Valley enjoying the best dessert wine I’ve ever had: a madeira from 1920. Some things do get better with age.

Hanging out with friends in a large house outside of Atlanta enjoying some of the finest whisky, cigars, and food.

Hung out in Austin during SXSW, bringing back good memories from a decade ago.

Celebrated a friend’s wedding anniversary in Pittsburgh. I enjoyed getting to see a bit of the ‘burgh for the first time and hang out with friends that I don’t get to see very often.

Walking with the girlfriend to coffee shops in Portland. Chatting with the baristas at Proud Mary, learning more about their process as I continue to improve my own process.

Walking for 45 minutes through the streets of Lima on the way to Central to beg our way into a table. Only to be denied and instead enjoyed the best meal at their sister restaurant, Kjolle.

In buying a bottle of whisky in Paris, the guy told us about a whisky speakeasy that the store runs. It’s in an old underground spot that used to be a spa. I had some of the best whisky I’ve ever had.

Sitting in the back of an Uber in Buenos Aires, chatting with the driver on the way to a restaurant. He asked what the average salary was in Canada. We said maybe $30,000. He was stunned. Like, utterly flabbergasted. He wanted to move to Canada right away. Then we figured out he thought that was monthly, not yearly. His excitement quickly deflated.

Finishing off the year here in Ottawa, with friends that I’ve known since I was 14 in high school. Much reminiscing with stories of those times.

Adventure is out there

A couple years ago, I decided to make the shift from “things” to “experiences” and my life has been full of them. I am frequently amazed at how lucky and privileged I’ve been and continue to be and how my life is full of amazing friends. Here’s to 2020 being filled with just as much and more.

AKA, how I set up my Sony DSLR to use as a webcam.

Unless you’ve only just woken from a months’ long coma and the first thing you decided to do was read my blog, you’re likely aware of (waves arms around) this quarantine. I’ve been home and isolated for two months now. Fun times.

As a result, I’m in a lot of Zoom calls. As a result, I’m envious of the few people with their fancy camera and mic setups. As a result, I decided to do something about it.

First, here are a list of articles of what other people have done to get this going:

• Dan Mall’s setup
• Jesse Gardner’s setup
• Matt Stauffer’s setup

Read them? If so, you may notice as I did that every single one of them use the Elgato Camlink. It’s a hardware dongle that allows you to plug in your camera via HDMI and it’ll be recognized as a webcam.

Cool cool cool cool. Here’s the thing: everybody and their grandmother have clearly read the same articles and ordered themselves the Elgato Camlink. As such, they are sold out everywhere. If you’re in the United States, it seems some people have still been able to get their hands on them. Up here in America’s Hat (i.e. Canada), I couldn’t find them anywhere.

I had pretty much resigned myself to living with the Mac’s FaceTime camera. Is that so bad?

Well, then I came across a YouTube video that perfectly describes how to setup a Sony DSLR as a webcam using a piece of free software called CamTwist.

Awesome!

Well, kinda sorta. It’s a clunky setup that requires me to fire up my camera, then fire up Remote, then fire up CamTwist, then fire up the remote streaming tool of choice.

Except, when I opened up Zoom, it wasn’t recognizing the CamTwist webcam. (Skype seemed to work fine but everybody is using Zoom these days.) Everything I was finding on the web was telling me to downgrade to a previous version of Zoom to allow this to work.

Turns out, as Zoom tried to fix a bunch of security issues, they decided to lock out any unsigned webcams. (This is explained in this Reddit thread.) CamTwist is 10 year old software and isn’t signed. As such, it doesn’t get recognized. To solve this problem, you need unsign Zoom so that it’ll allow unsigned webcams. This feels icky but it worked and since we’re dealing with a global pandemic at the moment, unsigning an app seems like the least of my worries.

Per the instructions in the Reddit thread, you’ll need to have Xcode installed and then you’ll be able to run this line of code:

codesign --remove-signature /Applications/zoom.us.app/

Just like that, you’re in business.

Now, like I said, it’s not ideal. You can’t minimize the Remote app or the webcam doesn’t work. You can’t use Spaces or the webcam doesn’t work. You don’t want to resize the Remote app or CamTwist will show the wrong thing. Remote resets its height and width every time its opened, so best not to mess with it at all.

On the upside, CamTwist is studio software, so you can play with effects and text overlays and even cut between multiple video feeds, if you’re feeling overly ambitious.

So, while not perfect, it’ll do.

Twenty-one billboards dotted around the UNESCO World Heritage city of Vilnius feature photographs of men, women and children wearing masks as part of a ‘Mask Fashion Week’.

The Men’s Milan Fashion Week set for June will be postponed to mid-July and presented in purely digital format with photos and video to avoid the risk

Location Media Resources Collection

Call No. PZ3 .Q22535 2017

Location Media Resources Collection

Call No. PZ3 .H34622 2016

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