Via mralarm, my tally of the Omnivore’s 100. Things I’ve consumed (73 of 100) are in all caps, things I have no interest in consuming (3 of 100) have been struck out. Of the things I’ve had, I like steamed pork buns, gumbo, eel, eggs Benedict, and catfish the best. Of the things I haven’t had yet, I’m most interested in trying bagna càuda and lapsang souchong.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Ever need to make some minor edits to a HUGE file? Like a 30GB XML file? Old standbys like vim don’t handle it too well. Fortunately, there’s tweak. Recommended!

Berkeley went nuts last night. Yesterday around 3PM I went to Triple Rock to start watching the returns roll in. At around 7 or so, once we realized that the geniuses at Triple Rock weren’t going to turn on the sound on their TVs, and not wanting to miss the speeches, we headed up to Haas to watch on the big screens there. On the way there we heard cheers erupt from all around the city–they had just announced Obama’s victory. We got to Haas just in time to see McCain’s concession speech and, of course, Obama’s long-awaited victory speech. Afterwards we went outside to see masses of students filling Bancroft, climbing up on traffic lights, waving flags, chanting U! S! A! (something I don’t think I’ve ever heard in Berkeley)… Every car driving down Shattuck was honking like crazy, fireworks, sparklers, and drums everywhere. A great night. I couldn’t be happier.

This morning, in the game room of the Frances Albrier Community Center, in between Dance Dance Revolution and an air hockey table, I cast my ballot. And I’ve never been happier to do it.

In honor of the last debate, a slideshow of a mural that recently went up a few blocks from my apartment:

Just finished watching the Presidential debate. There were a lot of moments I could write about, but this one particularly resonated with me:

McCain dismisses worries about the safety of nuclear power: “Senator Obama says that it has to be safe, or disposable, or something like that… look, I was on Navy ships that had nuclear power plants. Nuclear power is safe, and it’s clean!” He goes on to praise countries like Japan and France that rely heavily on nuclear energy.

I’ve lived in Japan, and I’ve toured one of its largest nuclear plants. I was extremely impressed with what a tight operation it was. If you know anything about Japanese organizational culture, you know that it is very well suited for the kind of absolute control that successful nuclear power production requires. Yet even the Japanese have not been able to prevent frightening and dangerous nuclear accidents. I was living there in 1999 and remember being very scared about the uranium leak at the Tokaimura plant. That wasn’t first nuclear accident in Japan, either. The lists of civilian and military nuclear accidents that have occurred around the world over the past 50 years are sobering.

I support expanding nuclear power in the U.S., but I can’t dismiss its very real dangers. Beyond the risks of accidents and leaks, nuclear plants make an attractive target for terrorists. Ridiculing someone for insisting on safety is reckless and irresponsible. John McCain says we need “cool hand at the tiller” of our government. He’s right, and the cool hand we need is Barack Obama.

October 15, 2008 update: McCain’s still flogging his “nuclear safety’s for sissies” line:

With the economy in shambles after eight years of Republican policies, and people losing their homes left and right, Democratic victories in the fall elections seem like a sure thing. But the ever-resourceful Republicans have come up with a plan: find the people who have been most victimized by Republican misgovernance, and make sure they can’t vote. Brilliant. Fortunately the Obama campaign isn’t putting up with this bullshit, and has filed suit against the anti-democratic Republicans.

Click album covers for more info.

Inspired by Nick Carr, I decided to compile a list of my favorite albums for each year of my life. The constraints are: only one album per year and no repeated artists. To make the task a bit easier, I also decided to restrict the list to albums I own, and to only consider studio albums: no compilations, live album, or DJ mixes.

Exercises like this are kind of pointless, but I found it interesting nonetheless. First of all, it drives home how unevenly distributed over time good music is. For some years, like 1981, I had a hard time recalling any albums I liked. Other years like 1984, or periods like 1991-1994 (high school!) made for some difficult choices. Purple Rain, The Pod, and Buhloone Mindstate should really be on this list, as should The Chronic.

The other interesting aspect of doing this is seeing at which point my musical taste formed: it isn’t until 1988 that this list reflects what I was actually listening to at the time (no, my parents didn’t play The Modern Lovers and Lust for Life for me in my crib). From that point on, my tastes have gone through various phases and changes (I like jazz a lot more now than I did back then), but I still like now what I liked then.

Finally, it makes me realize how the album is linked to certain genres and modes of consuming music. I had a hard time recalling albums from 1996-1998, because I was DJing at that time and mostly buying and listening to music in the form of 12-inch singles and DJ mixes. And for the last few years as well, a disproportionate amount of the music I listen to is singles downloaded from MP3 blogs and mixes posted to the web. In fact, I haven’t bought any 2008 studio albums yet, but decided to include I Pledge Allegiance to the Grind II because I love Killer Mike and it’s his best album. Which isn’t to say that I believe that the natural unit of music is the track. It’s just that the web allows me to more easily dig for forgotten older stuff, and so most of the albums I’m buying recently are not current releases but older things like Desire Develops an Edge, Joggers & Smoggers and Idiot O’Clock. It’s a great time to be a music maniac…