I live in Oakland with my lovely girlfriend and two awesome cats: Pantera and Oki. I also make things you can't put in your pocket.
This has been an incredible year for Tumblr. What started as a fun experiment has grown into one of the largest networks on the web, serving billions of views across more than 11 million blogs.
It’s an unparalleled privilege to spend every single day building a product used by so many…
Hauling dirt is donkey work. Labor intensive but inefficient. And at the end of the day there’s very little to show for all that effort.
Here’s an example of an experienced project manager (PM) generating donkey work:
PM: I’ve scheduled a scrum every morning at 10am.
Me: What’s a scrum?
“You don’t need to see his identification.”
On November 21, 2010, I was allowed to enter the U.S. through an airport security checkpoint without being x-rayed or touched by a TSA officer. This post explains how.
Edit: Minor edits for clarity. I have uploaded the audio and it is available
Based on your feedback, we’re going to make some upgrades to our homepage early next month.
We wanted to show more of your awesome stuff right up front. We also wanted to make it clear that we are a pricing site, not an auction site or a grocery store checkout price calculator site.
We…
If you want to get really good at making drinks, it’s important to develop a deep knowledge of your raw materials. Often, what distinguishes the best Martini you’ve ever had from an average Martini is that the bartender knew to pair the characteristics of a particular gin with the characteristics of a particular vermouth. Many of the classic tiki drinks created by Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic were only slight variations on a few basic formulas, differing primarily in the types of rum used. And in today’s cocktail world it’s often the recognition of a counterintuitive similarity between two disparate spirits that leads bartenders to create new variations on time honored drinks by substituting their base spirits. If you know your spirits inside and out, the world of cocktails is open to you.
Unfortunately, distilled spirits can be difficult to get to know on their own terms. Most are far too strong to drink neat and taste much other than burn. As we’ve seen previously, dilution can help make a fiery spirit manageable and release its natural aromatics, but dilution alone can also make a once vital dram feel a touch limpid. What the would-be aficionado needs is a way to soften the edges of an unruly spirit so that its nuances can be appreciated without robbing it of its personality and zing.
Enter the Old Fashioned: so named because it is essentially the original cocktail—the no-frills combination of liquor, sugar, bitters, and water that 19th century Americans would have had in mind when they ordered a capital-c Cocktail (and which old timers eventually found themselves having to ask for by a more specific name as bartenders became more fanciful with their concoctions). A well-made Old Fashioned is, as I’ve heard the Brooklyn bartender and writer St. John Frizzell say, the drink equivalent of taking a nice cut of steak and seasoning it with a bit of salt and pepper. It keeps the spirit front and center, but makes it more palatable by simultaneously toning it down and enlivening it.
Go Giants (Taken with instagram at Mountain View Caltrain Station)
