Fizziness Quotient

November 25, 2009 by Eric Richardson

Subconsciously, I think we've all gotten used to a certain range for how much a standard soda fizzes when dispensed from a fountain. You leave a certain amount of room in the cup, the fizz rises, settles, and you adjust that final bit of fill accordingly.

But have you ever found a certain drink that far exceeds that normal fizziness range? It's hard to adjust.

One of my favorite downtown eateries, Mendocino Farms, just opened a second location. As part of that, they added a fountain with sodas from Boylan Bottling. They're great sodas, and they use cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup.

I'm particularly fond of the root beer, but have found myself consistently surprised by the amount of fizz. Even when I purposely under-fill, the fizz still sometimes wins. Perhaps that's the cane sugar at work.

Welcome Back

November 23, 2009 by Eric Richardson

No long introductions... The site's been inactive for a little over a year, and completely down for eight months, but it's time to bring it back. After all, the blog's only one week away from turning 11, and its 10th birthday went completely unobserved.

As it was in the old days, I'll mostly be going on about random computer-ish things. These days, that may include some more journalism-ish things. Probably still a bit nerdy and uninteresting.

A minor technical note: I ended up not importing comments when I brought the archives over to the new code. I could end up doing it later, but at this point I'm thinking it's ok just to let them vanish.

Updates

October 20, 2008 by Eric Richardson

It's been a long time since I posted something here. My excuse is that I blog too much -- since my June 2nd post here I've written 243 stories at blogdowntown. I rarely have any words left to go anywhere else.

It's worth noting the big news in my life, though. For the past few months I've been working full-time on blogdowntown, which had previously been a full-time hobby. Last month my project application for verbdowntown was approved by Community Partners, a non-profit incubator located here in Downtown. That makes me the project leader for a non-profit that to-date has raised $0, though certainly we're hoping to change that in the future.

I'm hoping to rework this site soon, hopefully in advance of this blog's 10-year anniversary on November 30. I do still have a life, and I would enjoy occasionally writing about it here.

A Mid-Season Baseball Update

June 02, 2008 by Eric Richardson

Eric Richardson

I mentioned back in February that I was taking a shot at going back out and playing some baseball this year. The season started in March, and I've now played 12 games (11 on my Saturday team, 1 filling in with a Sunday team).

Defensively I think I got comfortable again pretty quickly. My arm, which I was pretty worried about before the season, hasn't really been a problem. I'm not going to make the long throws real well, but it's not hurting me (either in the game or afterward). I've caught a little and played mostly in the outfield.

Hitting took a while. I was 1 for 10 (.100) in the first five games. In the last six, though, I'm 7 for 20 (.350). I finally got an extra-base hit on Saturday, a double to left-center.

This weekend I got a double-dip, playing Saturday and Sunday. Saturday, I caught nine innings and went 2-4 with a single and the afore-mentioned double. Sunday, I went down to South Bay as a pool player and went 4-5 with two walks, two singles, a double and a triple.

While it's nice to be a little more successful at this point, it's been a blast just being back out there. I'd missed baseball.

making it more convenient to be plural

May 23, 2008 by Eric Richardson

Hello again neglected blog...

Ever since the April 1st launch of the new blogdowntown code, there's been a sloppy little bug that's bothered me, but not quite been bad enough to address. When putting comment counts on stories, I got sloppy and wrote:

<%= thumbnail.comments.length %> Comments

instead of being proper and making sure account for the singular case. Bottom-line: the conditional is ugly. I didn't want to have to write this everywhere:

<%= 
  story.comments.length.to_s + " " +  
  (story.comments.length == 1) ? "Comment" : "Comments" 
%>

So tonight I finally made the fix, but did it in a way that doesn't assault my senses. — Continue Reading...