12.30.06
Stuff I’m Rocking Right Now
In the time-poor spirit of the holiday season, I figured I’d get all up to date at once in a mega-post rather than more smaller ones. So here goes, all the stuff that’s pushing my buttons in the last week of 2006:
The Onion A.V. Club’s Best Albums of 2006 - With the limited time I get to hunt down new music these days, it’s nice to get the summary of what was actually good out there in the last year. Some real crackers on here - particularly impressed by the Decemberists so far, and special mention has to go to Scott Walker’s new album “The Drift” - genuinely the most disturbing music I’ve heard in a very long time.
The French Laundry Cookbook - a x-mas present in this case, with some really amazing stuff. Thomas Keller is an incredibly meticulous chef, and it’s interesting to pick up on some of the small touches he adds that can make a huge difference to a finished product - excessive straining is a recurring theme, but something like seasoning mozzarella cheese before using it as a topping seems almost obvious in hindsight yet is totally worth it.
Adidas Limited edition San Fran Sneakers: Different woodcut design on each shoe for mismatched awesomeness! Very comfortable too 
Hamaggedon: The true meaning of x-mas is ham, as Cartman wisely points out. That’s why I whipped out an awesome 10KG Kurobuta ham which was very good - and continues to be, since even with 6 of us we barely made a dent on its porky goodness. Next step, figure out how to make a hamwich.
(stick a fork in it, it’s done)
The return of the Blackbook: after almost 6 months in the shop, it’s back, and reminding me what a good machine it is. Almost makes me forgive Apple, but not quite.
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on Wii: Just beat it tonight, and it was thoroughly satisfying from about the second hour on. The first is a bit slow, and the first fishing section is incredibly bad, but it quickly recovers from the first stumble to finish better than Okami - which impressively is almost as good as Zelda (time to start wishing for a wii-mote controlled Okami in the future). Clover Studio, you were too beautiful for this world…
Bose QC-3 Quietcomfort headphones: Makes music sound new again. Expensive, but the quality of the audio has to be experienced to be believed.
Parallels latest beta with Coherence: Very slick - you can essentially have Windows apps running within windows in OS X. Still has the downside of running Windows apps, of course, but I can overlook that for work purposes.
Jamon Iberico: Sure, it’s $20 for about 5 thin slices, but boy is that some tasty ham
New Year’s Eve mixcast - just in time to party the year away.
Being in Sydney for the Holidays: It’s been a while since I had a solid couple weeks at home, and it’s a good feeling. Going by too fast already, though…