This weekend was filled with heavy alcohol, since I went to a whisky tasting. We only drank a ‘wee dram’ (2,5 cl) at a time, with some bread and water in between so we remained sober enough to listen to our sympathetic whisky expert who told us about malt, barrels and distilling.
After preparing our palet with a blended whisky (irrelevant which one, real whiskies buffs never talk about anything that’s not single malt) we got to experience 5 single malts:
Whisky #1: Arran – which was the cheapest of the lot, not bad but not too special
Whisky #2: Ben Nevis – I liked this one more, had more of a sherry touch, as I recall.
Whisky #3: Balvenie – this tasted like a girl’s whisky. Quite a disappaointment after the previous one. Doublewood = the whisky was kept in ex-bourbon barrels for most of the 12 years, and was then transferred to ex-sherry barrels to ‘finish it off’. Ex-sherry barrels give a much nicer taste (see, we were still sober when that was explained).
Whisky #4: Glenfarclas – this one was my favourite. Definitely sherry-like, smelled really nice.
Whisky #5: Classic of Islay – this one smelled like a barbecue. The malted barley was dried with peat (’turf’) and by God, did you smell it. It went great with some sliced meat, though.
In all, a pleasant experience. I might spend the 50€ one day to get me a bottle of Glenfarcas.
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or receive updates via email. Thanks for visiting!
I know I’m a bit late,and Ine, Bruno, Bart and … have already given their opinions, but I still needed an excuse to post some pictures of the event, so: last weekend I went to Pecha Kucha Brussels!
As everyone already mentioned, one presentation really jumped out: professor Jean Paul van Bendegem with his presentation “Wunderkammer”. It started with the painting “The origin of the world” by Gustave Courbet, which is essentially a frontal view of the crotch of a naked woman, which of course is a good way to catch the audience’s attention.
He then started free associating via freemasonry, over the Sherlock Holmes society, over women’s bottoms, the painting of the nude woman in court (I forget the details) and ended with the painting of a man’s crotch called “The origin of war”. There was no real message, but the voyage was vivid and entertaining.
Continue reading ‘Pecha Kucha Brussels’
After having Lacie, Maxtor, Iomega and most recently Netgear StorageCentral external storage fail on me, I am now the proud owner of a broken Western Digital My Book Pro II 1TB. I bought it less than a year ago and used it as a mirrored 500GB drive for my music, movies and images. It first failed 3 months ago (broken mirror) but after a full night of rebuilding it worked again. But now one of the drives has fallen victim to the infamous ‘click-of-death‘ and the drive would not show up anymore via USB nor Firewire. I disconnected the broken (SATA) disk, and then I could see the other one show up again as a lone 500GB drive. I quickly started copying to a 2 x 300GB FreeNAS system I had set up on an old Dell system (you don’t want to know how many old hard disks I have lying around). During the rescue operation the solo disk gave up twice, but by restarting the My Book device, it came back. So now I have an extra copy of all my data, most importantly my 80GB of photographs (quickly growing thanks to my Canon350D) and 120GB of iTunes music (mostly ripped CDs, not purchased, but still).
First thing is to see how Pixmania handles the warranty. They are supposed to send me a replacement for the broken drive, but I haven’t heard back from their customer support yet.
And then I have to make a decision about an alternative for reliable storage. Do I go for something semi-pro like the Buffalo Terastation Live (2TB, Raid5 for +- $1000) or do I build my own storage server with an old PC, a hardware RAID card and something like FreeNAS or Ubuntu. Decisions, decisions …
Since I have a lot of time on my hands, with my pneumonia and all, I started looking at TV series I hadn’t seen yet. I borrowed the Sopranos DVDs, but I also tried out some ‘alternative distribution’ series. Supernatural is not really my thing, Jericho is OK, Weeds seems not bad at all, but my current favourite is definitely “Californication“.
David Duchovny heads up the cast in this comedy about a novelist with sex and drug addictions who is struggling to raise his daughter half the time, while having problems with his ex-girlfriend.
Continue reading ‘TV Tip: Californication’
Net een stokje gekregen van Frank, en ik dacht er toch al aan een korte review van 2007 te schrijven, dus …
3 artiesten die ik in 2007 leerde kennen
- Balkan Beat Box
- Corinne Bailey Ray
- John Legend
3 dingen die ik niet licht zal vergeten
3 stommiteiten of blunders
- Barcamp Brussels #4 organiseren omdat ik vond dat het nodig was, niet omdat ik het wou. Het kwam op een slecht moment voor mij en ik heb er niet dezelfde energie ingestoken als de vorige keren, met het te verwachten resultaat. Geen erg, het was het moment om de fakkel door te geven.
- Mij laten gaan, op allerlei vlakken, met als apotheose alleen thuis zitten op Oudejaar met longontsteking. Augmentin met broodje kaas, en de eindejaarsshow van Raf Coppens trekt nergens op.
- Vrienden verwaarlozen. Dat rechtzetten is direct een goed voornemen voor 2008.
3 dingen waar ik trots op ben
- De manier waarop mijn passie voor tango, fotografie en Web2.0 tesamen kwam in de creatie van www.milonga.be, met agenda, wekelijkse newsletter en binnenkort forum. Is nu al de #2 tango portal in Belgie, nog 1 te gaan.
- De organisatie van Barcamp Brussels #3. Die ging zeer vlot, op een gezellige locatie, veel sprekers, super sponsors, goeie sfeer.
- Mijn eerste foto in de krant voor een artikel over het tango wereldkampioenschap in Buenos Aires.
3 gekochte of gekregen dingen
- De auto die ik wou. Nogal klein, nogal gulzig, desalniettemin de auto die ik wou.
- Mijn Canon 50mm fixed lens, heeft me veel doen evolueren als fotograaf.
- Een scheermes met borstel en schuim. Ik scheer nu weer nat, onder de douche.
3 mensen die dit stokje van mij krijgen
Tja, ik heb mezelf wat geisoleerd uit het bloggerswereldje de laatste 6 maand, ik hoop dat er nog op posts van mij gereageerd wordt.
Recent Comments