Trying to clear out my kitchen before I move home I made the following the other night… excellent stuff.

Cherry Peach Jam

This is a really tasty sweet jam recipe that I adapted from a crazily overdone one I found elsewhere on the net. The cherry juice turns the peaches a beautiful ruby colour and the aroma while it’s cooking is to die for.

Ingredients

Method

• Sterilize your jars and keep them nice and warm so the temperature shock of the hot jam doesn’t shatter them.

• Chop your fruit, then combine in blender or food processor. (You can also mash with a potato masher, but it takes a while)

• Process until you hit the desired consistency, I like my jam a little chunky but you can get it as smooth as you want.

• Move the fruit to a pot, add your pectin and lime juice.

• Bring to a boil

• Add the sugar, then bring to a rolling boil

• Once it’s boiling, cook while stirring vigourously for 5 minutes or so

• The scum that forms at the top is harmless, but doesn’t look very nice in your jam, stir in about a tbsp of butter and much of it will dissipate. If some remains you can add more butter, or remove it with a spoon.

• Ladle hot jam into jars, ideally with a canning funnel, but you can do without.

• Seal jars and process for 10 Minutes in a boiling water bath.

Super super tasty and really quick for a jam. Made excellent farewell gifts at the office as I finish my second last week.  More content to come soon.

I won’t be in Winnipeg for about 80% of Fringe so sadly the review tradition on this site is likely to be on hold for this year. Hopefully I can do some post-game for the Edmonton types since I will be in Winnipeg to catch the last weekend.

Still too busy hereabouts to do much actual writing, but there is still a vegas story or two to come, I promise (in addition to a tale of sweet lion-y almost death) In the meantime here is a great article that was linked to me.

“I needed a job and xenu was hiring” - A story about applying for a job with Scientology (accidently)

The warm summer months are here for most of us  (apologies to my 2.5 million southern hemisphere readers) and I feel inspired to share a fantastic looking recipe from our sister site GoonsWithSpoons.com

This was an entry from Sirrobin for the 5th Iron Chef Something Awful competition (Battle: Cookies)

Chocolate Chip Raspberry Ripple Ice Cream Sandwich Cookies

Apple’s design team takes another nosedive into stupidity today.

What were once some of the nicest notebooks on the market have been neutered yet again as Apple has eliminated removable batteries from the macbook line. Another fun change is exchanging the express slot (on most models) for an SD card slot rather than just adding the SD slot like almost every other notebook out there.

I’ve seen quotes from WWDC saying that the battery is good for 1000 charges or 5 years for most people according to them (I don’t know about all of you but my laptop would certainly charge 1000 times faster than 5 years.) There’s also no discussion of diminished charge levels after a while. Anyone who travels a ton and relies on having a spare battery for long flights or long days will tell you they won’t be buying a macbook next time around. It’s all well and good for those who can afford the swank flights with the individual airplane plugs etc… (Though some flights now require you to buy the airline’s particular adapter, ask Neil Gaiman :p ) but most of us still ride coach on the best deal we can get for our particular dates.

What’s happened to Apple’s industrial design group? As a designer I’d always argue that Apple tends to stray way too far into form over function in their hardware but this is getting ridiculous…

edit: Though at least they’re getting cheaper… especially the air. I still maintain that it’s a waste of money for a not amazing machine, but good god they’re even prettier at that price.

I’m a huge fan of The Onion’s AVClub site. One might even call me a die-hard fan. Yet sometimes I hate their living, breathing guts.

Once a year the writers take a break from practicing blood rites to whatever dark god has given them their dream jobs. This much needed break from the drudgery of watching movies,  listening to new albums and playing rock band gives them a chance to visit the All Candy Expo, held annually in Chicago. Yes, the All Candy Expo is exactly what it sounds like: Willy Wonka meets convention center. Candy Manufacturers from all over converge and hawk their products. The big boys like M&M/Mars and Hershey push new products and new flavours of old products, while small time folks try to become the “next big thing” for buyers from all over the world. Luckily they let journalists in too, as the loot attests:

Check out the report here, and feel the fires of jealousy burn.

Hey kids!  It’s time for another installment of 3 Quick Hits. Three things I find silly or cool or whatnot but that don’t really merit me writing much about them.

First up via SlipperyBrick:

Without a doubt the coolest usb flashdrive ever.

A fully transformable Ravage! Turning into a mini-cassette is so 80’s, all the cool kids these days use flash drives right? I am somewhat ashamed to admit how much I’d pay for a full set of these (or at least Ravage, Rumble and Razorbeak). Makes you wonder what form soundwave would take these days though, would he just be a laptop? An iPod seems a bit tiny for the coolest of all Decepticons, perhaps of all Transformers (and no, Blaster was nowhere near as cool… the autobot tapes were nowhere near as cool)

Numero Dos:

A commercial from bizaaro-world in North Carolina, I really hope this is an elaborate prank but I still spit juice onto my keyboard.

3rd shout out goes to the good old AVclub for their recent two part article on Ridiculous and Terrifying killer robots.

The Ridiculous and the Terrifying

I was quite pleased to see Maximillian from The Black Hole on there, but how are the short Circuit Robots not on there as ridiculous? A force of killing machines that can be stopped with a 3 stooges routine… sounds great!

Old news for some, but sadly even in the internet age uk-tv related news is not always easy to hear over here.

Simon Amstell has apparently retired as host of the BBC’s Music quiz/comedy show: Never Mind the Buzzcocks in order to spend more time touring as a straight (har!) standup artist.

This marks the second recent loss of a long-time cast member from NMTB as Bill Bailey left after the conclusion of the second-to-last series(season) last year. Phil Juputus remains as a team captain and frequent guest captain Noel Fielding of The Mighty Boosh will be taking over Bill’s chair permanently. Current rumours say the host position will be guest chaired for the coming season, apparently now not due til the fall. Hopefully they get another permanent host with the right combination of snark and deadpan.

Simon, we’ll miss you, come do the north american fringe circuit!

Check out a great clip of the surprisingly awesome Josh Groban and Omed Djalili on buzzcocks last year, then seek out episodes on your favorite internet video site for more.

I had high hopes for poker going into this Vegas trip. The stories I’d heard of easy fish (with money to burn) at certain tables in Vegas had me salivating a little, and my practice sessions prior to the trip had gone well. Unfortunately for me, things did not go according to plan and I took a series of bad losses that threatened to put me on the worst tilt of my poker life.

My first Vegas poker experience was perhaps not the ideal time to play. It was our first full day in the city and we started off with breakfast just off the strip at the Ellis Island Casino and Brewery. This little joint had been recommended for their off-menu $6.99 steak special, but our first visit was for a solid American breakfast. Chicken Fried Steak, Poached Eggs with Tabasco and some solid sourdough toast later I had my caloric intake for roughly a week and was ready for some action. Unfortunately for my heat-stroke susceptible self, it was unseasonably warm in Vegas for May. A long walk down Las Vegas Boulevard to the MGM grand, combined with a giant margarita meant that after the walk back I was feeling the onset of serious headache/nausea. Since I’d just spend $90usd on a ticket for KA, I figured I’d better fight it off and let the other boys start on the poker.

About an hour later (after a lukewarm shower, 3 Advil and about 2 gallons of water) I made my way downstairs for my first session. The first thing I learned is that Bally’s poker room sucks. It’s not a room; it’s not even a corner of the casino floor. It’s simply a roped off midline section with noisy table games on one side, a bar on another, and a flimsy half wall that doesn’t block much slot machine sound on the other. Far from the best setup, it’s pretty sad when even Club Regent has the poker tables more isolated than a Vegas room.

My first table was pretty tame. I more or less just watched the blinds roll by for an hour and stole the occasional hand. My buddy Dan was at the same table and in a pretty similar situation, though he played more than I did. The highlight of the afternoon was definitely seeing the guy sitting next to me hit a straight flush on the river and pick up the ~$500 High Hand bonus. After a while Dan took off for a nap and our table ended up merged with another pal Noah’s table just in time to see someone hit the diamond straight flush for a ~$400 High Hand bonus. Sadly after another 20 minutes that table started breaking up. Definite sign of the downturn of both Vegas and the poker boom that they couldn’t even keep 2 solid tables of $1-2 NLHE going in the early evening. It was buffet time anyway in order to catch KA at 9:30 so I took my meager profit and ran.

The next day we checked out the substantially swankier room at the Venetian arriving just as the daily noon tourney was starting. Given the size of the tourney we elected to just play a cash game as a new table was opening up. We had reservations at Rosemary’s that night and I didn’t want to miss it because one of us was locked in an unending tourney. While open to the casino floor, the Venetian’s room is on an outer wall and has three solid walls keeping out most of the noise. Perhaps it’s just me, but I also felt like the closer slots had the volume down a few notches as well.

As we sat down at one end of the table the other end filled with several overly serious sunglasses players and one “thinks he’s much funnier than he is” smart ass. Unfortunately for me, the smart-ass took a big chunk of my chips before I had him figured out. It was probably my worst hand of the entire trip and I’m still kicking myself for not calling, but I was nervous. I found cowboys (KcKd) in fairly good position and raised to $10 pre-flop. I got a few callers, including the smartass and the flop came out 3c 7c Jd, the smart-ass bet $5, 2 people folded and I raised him double, he called. I was a bit worried about him having fishhooks obviously, but he checked when the turn came out 2s and he checked to me. I bet $20 and he simply called. Unfortunately for me, the river was the Jc giving any Jack the trips and putting the flush on the board as well. To make things worse he bet the equivalent of the rest of my stack. Looking back at it now I had so much money in the damned pot I should have just called… I pussed out and folded, the asshole turned over 8d6h. Argh, I’m still so pissed while writing this. Had that hand occurred even half an hour later I would have called in a heartbeat after seeing his play. It was such a retarded hand, 86 unsuited and out of position? You’re going to call a raise and a bunch of bets with that?

FUCK!

I eventually recovered after re-buying and got out of that session only $50 down, but I still wondered what might have been. I played much better as time went on and made a couple bluffs of my own. We ended up getting a couple of pretty erratic players at the table that I wanted to take a bite out of, but after busting one in a heads up battle with AK vs JJ I decided to get out. Thankfully the Bouchon bakery is in the Venetian, and after we finally tracked it out… a couple TKO’s eased the pain a bit.

Rosemary’s (review to follow later) was fantastic and along with another profitable session at the (Las) Vegas Club downtown I was feeling refreshed and recharged Saturday morning. We’d already set Saturday aside as tourney day but still managed to pick up some cheap Penn and Teller tickets for that night. Caesar’s was definitely my favorite room of the trip. Though hard to find, it’s a completely enclosed room hidden away behind the sports book with comfy chairs and great dealers. Drink service left a little to be desired, but you can’t have everything. We managed to get in as some of the last few players for the 3pm $70 tourney. Without question I played my best poker of the trip in this tourney.

I started out by sitting out the initial crazy hands that seem to be part of every sub $500 tournament. Sitting at my table were a couple total donkeys with no clue what was going on, a grandma who was a mouthy, solid player but who spend as much time reading her book on some psychic as playing, a dangerous guy in a Chelsea jersey who loved to chase and a couple former frat boys out for someone’s bachelor party. Unfortunately for the rest of us, about 10 mins into the second round, the Chelsea Chaser got paid off with a river flush after going all in against QQ and 10-10 and had a significant amount of cash to throw away. Things seemed even crazier at another table as 5 people busted out in 3 hands and their players were spread out among the rest.  

My best early hand came with Jc-8c in the BB where I got to check and the flop 7 handed. Sure enough, Jd-8h-3s.  I bet 3x min, hoping to cut out a few people but still get a caller or two. Two callers later, the turn came out 8s and a little bit of my soul shouted “houray!” as I tried to look nervous and check. #2 checked and the young kid who was last to act, threw in about 2x minimum. I didn’t want to see another jack come out in case he had one, so I raised him triple… making it about 60% of his stack to call. The guy in #2 folded immediately, and the kid called without thinking. From the way he’d been playing so far I really doubted he wouldn’t have raised pre-flop with pocket jacks and he hadn’t seemed like the type of player to go chasing a straight that hard either. I watched his eyes as the river came out (a total blank 5h or something) and he didn’t react at all. At that point I figured he had an 8 or J and was hoping to out kick me if we tied. I didn’t hesitate and bet him all-in. Sure enough, he turned over As-Jh and I turned over 8’s full of J’s to scoop a pretty sizable pot that put me in the top 5ish for chips. A few hands later I limped in with J-8 suited from the small blind against a wimpy table and flopped two pair for another decent pot, it seemed to be my lucky hand for the day.

Caesar’s was good to me and I outlasted my fellows, but sadly I busted out in somewhere around ~13^th out of 50 when my stack was dwindling and I pushed with A-K and was called by JJ and AA. There we no miracle kings, but I did almost see a straight before the river coughed up a 7s and ended my day. No regrets though, I lasted longer than I thought I would and had nothing to be ashamed of.

I still felt good when I headed back to Bally’s and with no guarantee that my roommates would be around (and with me being sans-room key) I decided to play a bit more poker before I headed upstairs. Financially? A mistake… Entertainment value? Through the roof…

Even on a Saturday evening I had no problems just sitting down. I ended up being sat next to a loudmouth greek dude with a stinky unlit cigar and a giant stack of chips that he had apparently just acquired via a horrible beat. This guy was the single biggest character I met on the trip. His face looked like it was made of leather, and not leather of the rich Corinthian variety. It was more like the wrinkled hide of a booth at a strip club, a place that had once been a classy joint that Sinatra might have hung out at but that was now slinging watered down 2-for-1 draft corona with dancing girls on the wrong side of 40. He was the kind of guy you could easily imagine slinging grey market electronics in the east end of London. As I slid into my hard seat I heard him receive another warning from the floor boss for language as everyone around the table (even the guy who’s stack he’d just halved) laughed along at his last riebald joke.

The crazy fool acted like he was at a blackjack table, calling out the card he wanted half the time, offering the dealers tips if they’d pull out a 7 and basically playing with any two cards. He seemed to be 100% telling the truth on what he wanted as well, yet he kept winning. I admit to being kind of in awe of this oddball. I’d never want to play like him, but he managed to loudmouth his way to a substantial stack.

In one of the better hands we saw he was in the pot along with a husband and wife and a third short stack. He decided that the lady was going to win and continuously harangued her hubby and the short stack until they folded. He then called her to the river and folded without showing, but I spotted what I think was a 4-7 when he did. A few hands later he told Curtis (our dealer) that he could marry one of his daughters if he gave him a jack. Curtis complied and he turned over a boat to beat a flush. Annoyingly enough he pulled the same trick later to give himself a straight over my set of 10’s and I had to fold. I wasn’t very impressed (and I must say that seeing his daughters later Curtis should really pass.) and again took a series of unlucky 1 outers to end my day. P&T cheered me up endlessly though.

That was pretty much the end of poker for the trip. I’d still give myself about an 8/10 for play quality, I definitely suffered from a solid 4/10 for card luck though. Hopefully when I next go to Vegas I’ll be travelling from a city with a live poker room to have a practice session or two at first, the two hour journey to Caesar’s Windsor, Fallsview or Casinorama just isn’t worth it when the wait time to get at a table is so high. Still thanks to Craps and Blackjack I came back up ~$50us, so all is right with the world anyway.

We are in the middle of a global economic recession. Though I certainly wasn’t in any doubt about it before, I had it systematically reinforced during my recent visit to Las Vegas. Things are bad in Sin City… and getting worse.

…more after the break…

I arrived late on a Wednesday night and (though admittedly it was hardly a peak time) the airport was deserted except for my flight. A thin stream of passengers from my A320 snaked through the empty terminal. Row after row of Wheel of Fortune machines chirped for attention, their vacant seats a portent of things to come. Passing into the main baggage hall things were a bit more lively, but after grabbing my wheel bag I was still able to grab a cab immediately from a waiting line set up for at least 500 people.

My cabbie on the way to Bally’s was a lively soul and on a journey made quite a bit longer by a minor accident in front of us on the way out of McCarran he told me quite a bit about the town. Jim told me that he was a former construction equipment operator unable to find a job and in the vegas of the past decade, that’s saying something. Over 20 major casino-resort projects in Las Vegas have been cancelled, with many more scaled back or on permanent hold. Perhaps the most glaringly obvious of these is the Echelon Place, a massive complex on the former site of the Stardust at the north end of the strip. Originally envisioned as a 5000+ room resort with multiple hotels and a massive casino and conference center, most of the outer section has since been cancelled and the core of the project (the 3000+ room main hotel) stands roughly 1/3 completed construction on hold since August of last year, and unlikely to resume before at least 2010. It’s a gaping hole at the north end of the strip and there is now a solid gap between Steve Wynn’s boring monstrosities and the friendly old Sahara (we need not mention the festering pit known as the Stratosphere)

Unfortunately, the (lack of) construction of the Encore had other dire consequences. As part of an elaborate land/casino/retail land swapping deal involving Harrah’s, the Encore Group, McDonalds, the Rand Corporation and the Reverse-Vampires the Westward Ho was purchased and closed. Apparently the shiny new McDonalds on the site was built as a replacement for the one on the encore site when Harrah’s bought the Ho. Harrah’s then flipped the Ho over to the Encore owners in exchange for the Barbary Coast (which is a pretty good deal in anyone’s book given the Ho’s miniscule strip frontage.) The dire consequence was of course the loss of the strip’s best deal…the 99 cent slurpee sized Margarita

The other two new mega projects on the strip that are still in full swing were nearing completion as we visited. City Center is truly ridiculous in scale though it at least has some interesting buildings. Fontainebleau on the other hand appears to be following the Wynn trend of unexciting design with a faux classiness that’s just as cheesy as the themed resorts in its own way. The Cosmopolitan’s problems appear to continue as I heard next to nothing about it while I was there and I bet the Jockey club owners are thrilled to lose their parking for no reason. Caesar’s continues their quest to fill every square inch of their property with new towers emblazoned with bare breasted “Roman” statues and the Planet Hollywood (nee Aladdin) is building a new eyesore of a tower for their ugly and boring casino.

The construction agency wasn’t the only area obviously feeling the pinch. Jim told me that the hookers had been getting far more aggressive, with plenty of robberies and a lot more busts. This certainly seemed to be borne out by later observations and cab conversations. Even the prices on the cards handed out by the cricket slappers were dropping into the cellar. As my friend the Professor pointed out… $35 seems underpriced even for the fattest and homeliest of vegas callgirls.

Signs of economic downturn were everywhere, after dumping my bags and going looking for my friends I noticed row after row of empty slot machines and unstaffed table games at what is normally at least a fairly busy time of night. By the time I finally caught up to my group at the Sahara I had really noticed just how few people there were on the sidewalks compared to my last visit. This was particularly noticeable on a visit to Fremont downtown where despite it being barely midnight on a Friday night the Experience was more or less completely shut down, and most casinos fairly empty. It’s especially unfortunate timing given that people have finally put some money into sprucing up some of these classic places again (the remodeled interior of the Nugget is gorgeous) and may have trouble recouping their investment without selling out to someone else. It also likely means that much needed facelifts on places like the (Union) Plaza are likely not happening, particularly sad for a place that was once Biff’s casino in Back to the Future II. It was all extra depressing, most of downtown succeeds on people being wild and having fun despite the extra seediness. Despite winning a solid $150 at Blackjack that night I had zero desire to return downtown for the rest of the trip.

Gaming wise, poker rooms were rarely even half full, even during tournaments and the longest I ever had to wait for a seat at a low limit blackjack table was 5 minutes. Craps was somewhat harder to get at, but mostly because most casinos only had one or two tables running with the rest completely shuttered. For the poorer visitor like myself it was actually quite nice, since many casinos responded with lower limits. Heck, even the Bellagio is spreading a $1-2 NLHE game these days. Unfortunately it meant that I never got around to playing Omaha, Stud or Razz for fun since if the game was running it was always at least 5-10.

I made my contribution to keeping Vegas going through restaurants, cab fare and show tickets. My gambling take, which I originally thought was down, turned out to be up $50 after I retallied. Certainly not the $500-$1000 USD I should have been taking home but for a couple of ridiculous sub %5 river cards, but coming home positive is nothing to sneeze at. If you’ve never been to Vegas it’s actually a great time to visit, prices are low, hotel promoters are getting desperate  and show tickets for almost everything are easy to come by at a discount. Everyone should hit Las Vegas once, even if they aren’t a gambler.

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