Archive for February, 2010
|Paddock Wood Loki IPA
Friday, February 26th, 2010
I had the opportunity to taste this specialty brew by Saskatoon’s Paddock Wood Brewery. It’s good, very good even. Assuming of course you like beer, and more specifically the super bitter and hoppy India Pale Ale Style of brews. If you put together that IPA stood for India Pale Ale, and thought to your self “mmm, I do like Alexander Keith’s” this beer is not for you. This beer is a real IPA, for the indoctrinated hop head.
What I liked about it:
- Hoppie – I love the taste of hop flowers in my beer. This one does not dissapoint. I would consider it a double IPA or Imperial IPA myself based on the intense flavour.
- Bitter – 1 and 2 kind of go together here. It’s a pleasant and strong bitterness. It hits hard, and fades nice and slow leaving you with a sensation as close as a man can get to the female orgasm. Well, done.
- Smells like fowers – I like that.
- Sweet – has a caramel or toffee sweetness to it, everything seems to be in a good balance making this strong hoppie beer very palatable.
To sum up for those that have had the odd blast of other local IPA’s, I’d say it is on par with Regina Bushwakker’s brew Trephination Double and Winnipeg Half Pint’s Humulus Ludicrous. If that dosen’t mean anything to you, check them out when you get a chance. All the beer I’ve mentioned so far are seasonal, so you should drink them when you can find them.
That brings me to my next point, where did I have such a great beer. I managed to get some off the tap at Beer Bros 1821 Scarth Street, Regina. No telling how long they’ll have it in stock, but today is probably a good day for you to head down and give it a try.
Update May 27th, 2010
I took Tim Kramer’s advice left in the guest book, and went to the fainting goat restaurant last night. Loki was indeed on tap. I had it with the Duck Kabobs, an unbelievable pairing for this beer. I’ve had fantastic wine pairings before, but I’ve always found beer pairings a bit of a joke. Not so in this case, the beer and duck really played off each other, and there was definitely a flavor synergy.
Tags: beverages, reviews
Posted in reviews | No Comments »
Postfix Sending Spam From User www-data
Monday, February 22nd, 2010
Recently I discovered that Postfix had been busy sending spam emails to people all over the web. Several entries like this started showing up in my /var/log/mail.log
Jan 24 09:05:50 li51-89 postfix/qmgr[2971]: 278C6C499: from=<www-data@####.members.linode.com>, size=600, nrcpt=1 (queue active) 278C6C499: to=<luke.debett####@law.com>, relay=none, delay=185184, delays=185184/0/0.05/0, dsn=4.4.1, status=deferred (connect to law.com[12.170.132.211]:25: Connection refused)
I also found many rejected emails that had bounced back to my server in the /var/mail/www-data file. These gave me an idea of what kind of emails my server was busy sending out.
Here’s and example, I removed the link address from the email, parts of my server’s domain name, and the recipient’s email address.
--3432BC4CA.1262789678/####.members.linode.com Content-Description: Undelivered Message Content-Type: message/rfc822 Received: by ####.members.linode.com (Postfix, from userid 33) id 3432BC4CA; Wed, 6 Jan 2010 08:54:36 -0600 (CST) To: runner####@hotmail.com Subject: Biggest result ever MIME-Version: 1.0 ^M Content-type: text/html; charset="utf-8" ^M X-Mailer: eComm Php^M From: mail@shop.subdomain.org ^M Message-Id: <20100106145437.3432BC4CA@####.members.linode.com> Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2010 08:54:36 -0600 (CST) Only here you can get it. <a href="CENSORED"><font size=3 color="orange">Get now</font></a><style>}3;m@7~w(;9j]8T_3FB|}IP9b5X][H;Np5nlEn</style> --3432BC4CA.1262789678/####.members.linode.com--
From the “From” line in the above returned email, I could find the source of the problem. My website located a shop.subdomain.org was being hijacked to send spam. This particular website was running osCommerce v2.2 Rc 2a last released in 2008. There were no updates available to OsCommerce that fixed this problem.
I suppose at this point I could have tried to find the component at fault and bugfix it myself, but I took the lazy way out, and completely shut down the site.
Result: problem fixed.
Hope this helps someone with a similar problem. For those that must know, I started using Joomla 1.5 and Virtuemart for the same website. Haven’t had any problems yet… fingers still crossed.
Tags: linux
Posted in linux | 2 Comments »
Human Bed Warmers Now at the Holiday Inn
Monday, February 15th, 2010
This has been written about in a few other blogs and news sites, so I’m just going to pass on a link rather than re-write the same stuff.
I first heard about this on CBC Radio 1, and a quick google search will show a half dozen “credible” sources. It’s not a hoax, but given the thoughts posted on most blogs, I can’t see it staying around for long.
Tags: humour, news
Posted in humour | No Comments »
23% Chance Evidence of Dark Matter Has Been Found
Friday, February 12th, 2010
Here’s an interesting article from the BBC. Looks like they may have (23% probability) detected Weakly Interacting Massive Particles or WIMPS. These are one of several particles that scientists believe could make up Dark Matter.
Personally I find Dark Matter very interesting. As the theory goes, everything we can see, detect, or otherwise interact with makes up only 5% of the universe. Some days I wonder what good finding dark mater would do, since we can’t interact with it. But then I think, what if we could interact with it, once we understood it.
Here’s some completely unscientific what-ifs that will hopefully get you excited about this stuff. What-if dark matter could:
- be the key to pinpointing the center of the universe?
- could be the answer to the question of why? What caused the Big Bang? Has there been more than one? Are there multiple universes?
- be turned into ordinary matter?
- be turned into ordinary energy?
- could propel spacecraft much faster than the speed of light?
The potential upside certainly deserves further investigation. Even if I’m just making up a bunch of unrealistic unscientific Original Star Trek Style nonsense.
Without further ado, here’s the article.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8508662.stm
Tags: news, science
Posted in science | No Comments »
RSS Feeds; saving time and staying up to date
Monday, February 8th, 2010
RSS is part of the whole web 2.0 thing. It allows you to subscribe to a website, like this one, and receive notification of new content. Huzzah, you can finally stop checking my blog every day for new content knowing that I only update once a week at best. Or, checking it about twice a year and finding you have missed too many posts to be bothered with.
For those that don’t know, web 2.0 is basically websites and web applications based around the user, allowing for interaction. You can think of social networking sites like Facebook, video sharing sites like Youtube, or even this blog. That’s right, MikeLenzen.com is part of the whole web 2.0 craze. This is because it allows comments from users, like you, and track-backs to other blogs which link to posts here. Give it a try, post a comment when you are done reading this post.
Now back to RSS. There are two different ways in which I use it, and right or wrong I’m going to share them with you.
First, you need to know how to find out if a website supports RSS (note there are other formats which act about the same as RSS. These are RDS and ATOM). See the image at the very top of this post? It’s orange with some white quarter circles and a dot. If you see that image in the right of your address bar (the area of your web browser that shows what web address you are visiting), it’s supported. You should see that logo in the described location right now as this site does support RSS.
Okay, so what can you do with it? The first way I use RSS is for frequently updating sites that have dozens of new articles each day. Think news sites. RSS works great here, because it allows you to quickly scan the titles of all the day’s news articles and read only the ones that interest you. For this I use the built in “Live Bookmarks” in Firefox. Don’t have Firefox? click here then comeback and read the rest of this article using your new Firefox browser.
Okay, you’ve got Firefox, so here’s how this “Live Bookmarks” thing works. With any luck your version of Firefox came with a button directly bellow the Address Bar that says Latest Headlines. This is actually the “Live Bookmarks” feed showing the latest news from news.bbc.co.uk. Because this is supposed to be somewhat of a tutorial I’m going to show you how to set it up, even though you probably already have it. Note this method will apply to any site that supports RSS, not just the BBC.
In a new tab brows to http://news.bbc.co.uk. Then simply click the orange logo I described earlier in the address bar. A new page should load with all the newest articles. This is the RSS feed. Firefox will be asking you at the very top of this if you would like to subscribe to the feed. Make sure “Live Bookmarks” is selected and click the Subscribe Now button. Enter the title you want your feed to be called and select Subscribe. You should now see your brand new RSS feed embedded into Firefox. Assuming you used the default title, it should look something like this when you click on it.
There we have it. Just click on any article titles that tickle your fancy, and it loads in the browser. The feed updates every time you open your browser, so your list of newest articles is always up to date.
Okay, on to method two. I use this method when I want to share articles with friends, or simply keep up to date on websites and blogs that do not update all that often, say like MikeLenzen.com. There are programs out there that can be loaded up with as many feeds as you’d like, and they will pool them all in once place allowing you to see what you’ve read and what you haven’t. Most of them also let you read the articles, or at least a summary, right there so you can get caught up with all your reading in one place. I use a web application called Google Reader to do this. There are many reasons I settled on Google Reader, for example:
- I haven’t tried very many of the applications available. This was good enough
- I don’t need an offline viewer or dedicated program as I’m always online, but not always at the same computer
- It works well
- It allows sharing so I get to read interesting articles my friends find, which i would otherwise miss
- It’s web based so I can use it in Linux, Windows, Mac or anything else with a web browser
- It’s free
The first thing you need to do is to setup your own google reader account. Click on this link to get started. If you are already a user of any google apps, like gmail, you just enter your login name and password. If your not, you’ll have to create an account. Alright, we’ve got that done. now click on the orange RSS logo on this website just like we did for the BBC website before.
Whoa, what’s this? There is more than one feed! On this site there are. You can select the main feed which will show you all new posts I make, or one of the comment feeds which will either show you all new user comments for the entire blog, or just the comments for only the article you have selected.
Lets select the main feed. This time when Firefox asks us what we would like to use to subscribe to the feed, choose “Google” instead of “Live Bookmarks” then click Subscribe Now. In the next page, select Add to Google Reader. This will show you a preview of what the feed will look like. Simply hit Subscribe one more time and you are done. Now, you can log into Google Reader at any time and get updates from all the websites and blogs you want to follow. Google Reader will automatically check all your feeds and display only the new articles. This way, you can be sure you are updated with new articles from you favorite sites without having to continuously browse to each site in hopes of new material.
Tags: tips, web
Posted in tips | No Comments »
The Unforseen Journey of Nathaniel Dunbar and other tales of whimsical sadness – a quick review
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010
Today I had the privilege of viewing the entitled show at the Globe Theatre in Regina. The show was created by Melanie Hankewich vocals, typewriter, and ukulele & Jeremy Sauer piano, guitar and accordion (whom I once played in the Edgely Jazz band with. Don’t get us confused as he became a virtuoso musician, and I did not). Also present: Elizabeth Curry base and Jody Mario drums.
The Unforeseen Journey of Nathaniel Dunbar and other tales of whimsical sadness is part of the Shumiatcher Sandbox Series. It was performed at the same time as the main stage play but in the Shumiatcher theatre. For those that haven’t been, it’s a cozy little room with bar, tables, and individual chairs. The stage is at the front of the room, unlike the globe which is a theatre in the round. Though this is the first show I’ve seen in this room, I understand that it showcases young talent and experimental theatre. The decorations this night had a distinctively old feeling to them, bringing you back to the early days of jazz when still picture movies, and vacuum tube radios were the latest and greatest.
The show was amazing. It’s a musical event, that tells a fun story through music, costumes, props, and projected still images. The stage set a perfect atmosphere for the music, the still pictures and silent movies were spot on, the story was fun, and best of all the music was hard hitting. I listen to a lot of music, attend a reasonable amount of concerts and theatre; but few shows I’ve seen can hold a candle to this. It’s really hard for me to do any sort of justice to it with my poor command of the written language. All I can say is that I came out of the show wishing I could offer up my life savings to have one of the upcoming shows recorded and distributed on CD. Unfortunately, my life savings are woefully inadequate.
Thanks to the pamphlet handed out when I entered the theatre, I was able to find that both Jeremy and Melanie are members of the band the Continos. I did a quick google, but couldn’t come up with anything. I can say that I’m going to be watching for future performances, if you hear of any please let me know.
The show runs until February 6th. If you have a chance, I highly suggest picking yourself up a couple of tickets and attending one of the last performances. It’s about a 45 minute show, costs $20. I highly recommend it.
Here’s a Link to the review on Prairie Dog Magazine:
http://prairiedogmag.blogspot.com/2010/01/theatre-review.html
Tags: music, reviews
Posted in reviews | No Comments »
Kiva Challenge
Monday, February 1st, 2010
Back on December 17th, 2009 I sent the following message to 17 friends and family.
Hello!
In the spirit of Christmas, I’ve decided to help people in third world countries by inviting my friends to become lenders through kiva.org. As a special Christmas incentive, I will make an additional $25 in loans for each of my friends that becomes a lender in December or January. The site should let me know who accepts, but you may want to send me an email just in case.
Oh, and please join team H.O.O.K.A.H. (not a requirement, but appreciated)
Here are the results. Of the 17 friends emailed, 2 contacted me. One joined Kiva for the first time because of my challenge. The other was already a member of Kiva but stepped up with an additional $25 loan.
As promised, today I loaned an additional $50 through Kiva. $25 went to each of Ayten Qarayeva and Siham. You can check out my loan history by following this link to my profile Mike Lenzen on Kiva.org.
For those that don’t know, Kiva is an Internet based micro loan company. They allow lenders to come together to loan money to some of the world’s poorest people so they can invest in businesses and become self sufficient entrepreneurs. In these poor countries many people are in need of small sums of money to make a huge difference in their lives. Unfortunately, without organizations such as Kiva there would be no way for these people to raise the required funds to start or expand their businesses. In my opinion, Kiva does make a difference and I encourage everyone to become a lender today http://www.kiva.org.
Tags: charity, web
Posted in charity | No Comments »