Blog & White

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The MI6 has just obtained a fake Fabergé egg in East-Germany from the hands of a dying 009, and decide to investigate the murder. They discover that the real egg is going to be auctioned soon at Sotheby's, from an unknown origin. Bond goes to the auction and manages to replace the real egg with the copy and notice the buyer, Kamal Khan, who is usually a seller rather than a buyer. Bond follows him to his palace in India, where he meets him and lures him with the real egg, equiped with a transmitter. The egg gets stolen by Khan's girlfriend Magda and Bond is kidnapped and taken to Khan's palace where he remains a prisoner. Khan presents the egg to the mysterious Octopussy, who lives on an island populated only by women and who makes a living from smuggling jewels. Later, in Khan's palace, Bond manages to witness a dialog between Khan and rogue Red Army General Orlov, about making copies of a lot of Russian historical treasures and about an attack that will taking place in Karl-Marx-Stadt. Bond then escapes and pays a visit to Octopussy, where he discovers that she owns a circus that is currently in Karl-Marx-Stadt. Going there, he learns that the circus is going next to West-Germany on a U.S. military base, and that the jewels are hidden on the circus'train. The wagon hiding the jewels is however secretely switched with another one, identical the the first one, except that it holds an nuclear bomb instead of the jewels. Bond discovers that Orlov's plan is to detonate the bomb in the U.S. base, to make it look like an accident and discredit the U.S. presence on German territory. Once the americans would have left, Europe would be vulnerable enough to be invaded by the Soviet Union. Bond manages to disamorce the bomb and to follow Khan back to India where he is preparing to flight. With the help of Octopussy's troops (who have been betrayed by Khan) he attacks Khan's palace, chases him to his airplane, saves Octpussy who had been made prisoner during the attack and get rid of Kahn.

Very fruity, the taste reminded me strongly of ananas, followed by a taste of white wine (Riesling, maybe). The aftertaste is terribly bitter, though. Made of malted barley.

Morland Brewing, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, England. 6.5% alcohol.

“Chocolate malt and dark chocolate are combined with Young's award winning rich, full flavoured dark beer…”

It smells like hot chocolate, and its taste is both sweet and bitter, like a very rich hot chocolate, only cold and fizzy. The chocolate taste dominates completely the one of the stout. I would also guess that the chocolate has been made with Criollos or maybe Trinitarios cocoa beans. It's not sweet enough to go well with chocolate, though. Made of malted barley and oats.

Young & Co's Brewery P.L.C. The Ram Brewery, Wandsworth, London, England. 5.2% alcohol.

© Imdb.com

This documentary features Al Gore (the same ex-next president of the U.S.) lecturing about global warming, interspersed with pictures and clips from different locations and various topics. Gore basically tries to convice americans that global warming is actually hapenning despite the claims of the current government, and shows various scientific proofs (CO₂ levels in the atmosphere in the past 650,000 years, temperature levels over the same period…). He also explains the consequences of global warming on the natural disasters such as hurricanes (getting more powerful when passing over warmer sea) and drought (caused by higher evaporation due to higher temperatures), on the desynchronisation of the birth of baby birds and of caterpilars, their usual food, as well as the influence of the melting of ice crusts in Groenland and Antarctica on sea currents (especially the Gulf Stream), which could disappear if the sea gets colder because of more intensive melting of the ice. He also accuses the big corporations to try to hide the scientific results proving the existence of global warming, the same way the tobacco industry tried in the past to deny and hide the existence of a link between smoking and lung cancer. Finally, he gives some hints to the audience about what to do in order to produce less CO₂, showing that the technologies are available but the U.S. refuse to use them, putting the country behind most other countries in the world on that matter, including China.

The movie was interesting, well built and easy to understand. I wonder though if Gore has a political agenda, because he's so many times pointing fingers at the current administration and its supporters.

Food pairing is fun, because it looks absurd at first sight. Then you think about it, and it still seems improbable. Then you taste it, and… sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not ;)

This second edition of They Go Really Well Together started by Martin at khymos.org is now hosted by Tara at Should You Eat That?. This time, the goal is to associate banana with parsley. I did it with an obvious parsley enhanced banana milk shake.

Ingredients

• 2 ripe bananas
• 100g vanilla ice cream
• about 5 dL milk
• 5 cL fresh parsley

Preparation

Peel and slice the bananas into a blender. Add the ice cream cut into small parcels (otherwise you might clog the blender) and the milk. Mix until smooth.

In a small and fast blender, chop the parsley. Add about 2 dL of milk shake, and mix until smooth.

Comment

It's foamy and creamy like any banana milk shake, but definitely much more green! The first attempt smelled and tasted obviously of banana and vanilla, with a hint of something else you can't recognize. The parsley then bursts out in the aftertaste.

In the second attempt I put a little less parsley (the leftovers of the bouquet, actually), and whereas it looked the same and tasted fine, the aftertaste was absent. I suppose numerous experiment and a precision scale (for weighing the parsley) would be necessary to be able to reproduce the recipe.

“aromatic, dry, fruity flavour.”

The smell is fruity, but I can't put a name on it. It tastes very fruity, maybe of peach, with a very slightly bitter aftertaste. Made of malted barley, bottle conditioned.

Young & Co's Brewery P.L.C. The Ram Brewery, Wandsworth, London, England. 6.4% alcohol.

“For centuries, the soldiers of the Highlands and the Lowlands of Scotland have been familiarly referred to as Jocks – powerful fighting men who have enjoyed strong beers in their off-duty hours.

Old Jock is a classic Scottish Strong Ale. Dark and strongly flavoured it should be drunk at room temperature and savoured like a fine wine.

Highly recommended as accompaniment to cheese and meat dishes.”

Smells slightly like beef stock, but the taste is sweet and the after taste reminds me slightly of chocolate. Made of malted barley.

Broughton Ales limited, Broughton Biggar, Scotland. 6.7% alcohol.

I dug again into my hacked blosxom to find more ugliness, such as opening files for all the stories, including the ones that are not going to be displayed. This divided the time spent in blosxom::generate by 3.

Surprisingly, replacing the look-behind assertions in interpolate_fancy::__ANON__'s regexps didn't made as big a difference as in textrite::rite (1.11 ms against 0.813 ms), probably because there wasn't that many of them and weren't called that often

Profiling results are now like this:

Total Elapsed Time = 1.236275 Seconds
  User+System Time = 1.066275 Seconds
Exclusive Times
 %Time ExclSec CumulS  #Calls sec/call Csec/c Name
  10.2   0.109 0.127     134   0.0008 0.0010 interpolate_fancy::__ANON__
  7.50   0.080 0.178      13   0.0061 0.0137 blosxom::BEGIN
  5.06   0.054 0.428       1   0.0540 0.4283 blosxom::generate
  4.41   0.047 0.098     368   0.0001 0.0003 entries_index::__ANON__
  3.75   0.040 0.040       7   0.0057 0.0057 CGI::_compile
  3.75   0.040 0.054       9   0.0044 0.0061 CGI::import
  3.75   0.040 0.040      40   0.0010 0.0010 textrite::rite
  3.66   0.039 0.039     690   0.0001 0.0001 File::Basename::fileparse
  2.81   0.030 0.060       8   0.0037 0.0074 Net::SMTP::BEGIN
  2.81   0.030 -0.000     62   0.0005      -  Exporter::import
  2.81   0.030 0.030      40   0.0007 0.0007 magiclink::story
  1.88   0.020 0.020       5   0.0040 0.0040 autotrack::BEGIN
  1.88   0.020 0.030       7   0.0029 0.0042 IO::File::BEGIN
  1.88   0.020 0.089       8   0.0025 0.0111 writeback::BEGIN
  1.88   0.020 0.020      41   0.0005 0.0005 writeback::real_path

The User+System Time is lower, but for some reason the Total Elapsed Time is about the same.

Profiling results for the new blog engine (main page):

Total Elapsed Time = 1.245757 Seconds
  User+System Time = 1.235757 Seconds
Exclusive Times
 %Time ExclSec CumulS  #Calls sec/call Csec/c Name
  14.9   0.185 0.586       1   0.1851 0.5857 blosxom::generate
  12.0   0.149 0.187     134   0.0011 0.0014 interpolate_fancy::__ANON__
  6.47   0.080 0.158      14   0.0057 0.0113 blosxom::BEGIN
  5.66   0.070 0.070      40   0.0017 0.0017 textrite::rite
  4.53   0.056 0.095     367   0.0002 0.0003 entries_index::__ANON__
  4.05   0.050 0.059       8   0.0062 0.0074 Net::SMTP::BEGIN
  3.24   0.040 0.108       8   0.0050 0.0135 writeback::BEGIN
  2.43   0.030 0.030       7   0.0043 0.0043 CGI::_compile
  2.43   0.030 0.043       9   0.0033 0.0048 CGI::import
  2.27   0.028 0.037     317   0.0001 0.0001 interpolate_fancy::_resolve_nested
  1.62   0.020 0.020       1   0.0200 0.0200 archives::filter
  1.62   0.020 0.019       4   0.0050 0.0048 entries_index::BEGIN
  1.62   0.020 0.030       5   0.0040 0.0060 autotrack::BEGIN
  1.62   0.020 0.020      27   0.0007 0.0007 vars::import
  1.62   0.020 0.010      62   0.0003 0.0002 Exporter::import

The problem in textrite::rite came from the use of look-behind assertions in Perl regexp. I've changed all of them so that look-behind is not needed anymore. The same problem occurs in interpolate_fancy::__ANON__, but I'm not going to look into it yet.

The other problem was that textrite::rite was called for all the stories, including the ones that were not displayed (which was most of them). I changed the internal structure of the main script so that the processing of the story happens after discarding the non-displayed ones.

Un litre d'essence produit 2,4 kg de CO₂, donc ma voiture qui a consommé en moyenne 6,8 L/100 km ces deux dernières années produit environ 16,3 kg de CO₂ pour 100 km.

Et un humain alors ? Si on considère qu'une inspiration-expiration échange 0,5 L d'air, que l'air inspiré contient 21% d'O₂, que l'air expiré en contient 16% et qu'on respire environ 20 fois par minute, on trouve qu'un homme produit 1,3 kg de CO₂ par jour. Sachant qu'un homme peut marcher 40 km/j, il faut 2,5 jours pour parcourir 100 km, d'où une production de 3,3 kg de CO₂/100 km. Sur cette distance, la voiture peut transporter 4 personnes sans produire considérablement plus de CO₂, donc 4 personnes marchant 100 km produiront 13,2 kg de CO₂, ce qui finalement n'est pas tellement moins (19%) que ma voiture.

La différence, évidemment, c'est que nos quatre marcheurs ne consomment pas de l'énergie fossile mais de la biomasse, donc le CO₂ qu'ils produisent a déjà été extrait de l'atmosphère.

“Brewed using a cool, slowly fermentation process together with the finest quality Maris Otter barley and Fuggles & Goldings hops”

It smells a bit like vegetable stock. The taste is quite sweet, fruity with a hint of melon. Made of malted barley.

Marston's Brewery, Burton upon Trent, England. 6.2% alcohol.

© Imdb.com

Sophie, une jeune femme, a été victime d'un sort jeté par la sorcière des terres perdues : elle est devenue vieille. Elle décide de quitter la ville et de partir à la recherche de la sorcière pour lui demander d'annuler le sort. Le chemin est ardu, et elle finit par trouver refuge dans le château ambulant de Howl, où elle fait connaisance de Calcifer, le démon de feu qui fait fonctionner le château et l'empêche de s'effondrer, et de Michael, l'apprenti de Howl, et de Howl lui-même, qui est sous l'emprise d'un terrible maléfice. Devant le désordre et la crasse du château, elle se proclame femme de ménage et entreprend de nettoyer le château. Au fil du temps qui passe, elle fait davantage connaisance avec les habitants du château. Un jour, la guerre éclate et le roi fait demander à Howl de se battre pour le royaume. Howl est un couard, et Sophie se propose de se faire passer pour sa mère et d'aller expliquer à la reine qu'il ne peut pas se battre parce qu'il a trop peur. Sur le chemin du palais royal, Sophie rencontre la sorcière des terres perdues et lui demande d'annuler le sort. La sorcière prétend ne plus se souvenir comment l'annuler. Tandis que Sophie explique son cas à la reine, la sorcière est victime d'un sort anti-magie protégeant le palais et perd toute sa magie ; elle devient vieille, montrant son age véritable, et passablement gaga. Sophie la prend en pitié et l'emmène habiter avec elle chez Howl. Howl est tombé amoureux de Sophie (il a d'ailleurs remarque que lorsqu'elle dort ou exprime ses sentiments, elle redevient temporairement jeune) et redécore le château par magie pour donner davantage de place à ses nouveaux habitants. Il se confie aussi à Sophie qui apprend qu'il a perdu son âme, volée par Calcifer, lorsqu'il était enfant, en échange d'une grande puissance magique. Lorsque la guerre se rapproche du château et menace de le détruire, Sophie évacue tout le monde, y compris Calcifer, ce qui provoque la destruction du château. La sorcière tente de s'emparer de l'âme de Howl en prenant Calcifer pour la garder pour elle, mais Sophie réussit à rendre son âme à Howl et à libérer Calcifer du contrat qui le liait au sorcier.

Je croyais que Chihiro était passablement délirant, mais ce film là est encore pire. Le seul vrai reproche que je lui ferai c'est le scénario trop touffu et le manque d'explications par endroit, qui fait nettement ressentir qu'il s'agit d'une adaptation d'une œuvre beaucoup plus complexe (un roman de Diana Wynne Jones). Le pire est probablement l'épouvantail qui, d'un baiser de Sophie, se transforme en Prince Charmant et annonce qu'il est justement le Prince du pays voisin et qu'il va rentrer chez lui pour arrêter la guerre. Ça tombe vraiment comme un cheveu sur la soupe.

“dark in colour, full of body with a smooth velvet finish”

Smells like beef stock an metal, tastes bitter like a Guinness, and reminds me very vaguely of coffee. Made of malted barley and wheat.

Daleside Brewery Ltd., Harrogate, Yorkshire, England. 4.4% alcohol.

© Imdb.com

A truck containing an unknown toxic explodes on the motorway, killing numerous people from an unknown disease. Faye, hunting another pery, manages to catch a glimpse from the driver of the truck, who then disapears mysteriously. Later, her and Spike learn that the driver is worth a huge bounty. Spike and Fay investigate separately. Spike discovers that the mysterious disease is actually caused by a bioweapon made of nanomachines hidden in lymphocyts. The bioweapon is secretely manufactured by a pharmaceutical lab which tries to hide the existence of the weapon and its vaccine. Meanwhile, Faye manages to find the lair of the mysterious truck driver, but she's made prisoner by him. Helped by Electra, a security agent from the pharmaceutical laboratory who has learned too much about it employer and has been disavowed. They are thrown in a cell, but manage to escape and take with them numerous doses of vaccine that they are going to spread over the city on Halloween night, which is the time and place chosen by the truck driver to contaminate all the inhabitants. His plan fails, and he is confronted by Spike. He then tells Spike that he was a soldier sent to Titan as a guinea pig to test the bioweapon. He was the only survivor, and he's very angry about the whole world. Spike defeats him, and everything ends well, more or less.