lifebsideben

Software Engineering for Internet Applications by Philip Greenspun (and a few others) is brilliant. An excellent primer for those new to developing for the internet, even grizzled web developers will likely find nuggets of information here. Well laid out, clear and admirable in breadth if not always depth (but impressively deep too in places), I highly recommend it. I wish this had existed 5+ years ago, but I guess we were all learning this stuff as we went, back then!

I do have a copy of Greenspun’s old book on web development, but was never very impressed with it. This “book” above, however, is awesome. I’m going to start pointing lots of people to it…

Tags: engineering

When I lived in Sarria (part of Barcelona), Spain, my wife and I frequented the O.K. Sarria (at C. Jaume Piquet, 49), which was a strange sort of Catalan fascimile of an American sports bar. There were baseball caps from American teams, a huge poster of New York at night, and Budweiser signs. Now, you couldn’t actually order a Bud (thankfully), but you could get the best burgers in town. And, giant ‘claras’, which are something like a shandy… traditionally half-lemonade and half-beer, they really quench the thirst on a hot day (or night). However, at the O.K. Bar, they made them a bit differently–half Fanta limon, half dark Estrella Bock Damm beer. That was truly great stuff.

When I moved back to the US, I couldn’t stop from craving an O.K. clara… and tried to find both Estrella Bock Damm, and Fanta Limon, to no avail. The flavors of Fanta (owned by Coke), are determined by the local bottlers/distributors, and after a couple of inquiries, I couldn’t find any U.S. distributors who carried lemon. I tried orange… yuck! I tried Squirt… nope. I tried various lemonades… un-uh. I could never tell if it was the lemon bit, or the beer… because none of the beer tasted like Bock Damm either.

Late in 2004, I went to Dallas on business, and was hanging out in a bar downtown owned by the friend of a co-worker. I asked for a good local beer, and got some Shiner Bock. Whoa! Something pretty close to Estrella Bock Damm! Excellent! It’s not quite the same, but reasonably close. And better yet, I can get it at Safeway!

OK, so now I had the beer. After much searching, I found a Yahoo Store called GermanDeli.com that I could order Fanta from… imported from Europe. I did this a few times, and while I was mightily impressed with the care they took to ship me the cans, each individually wrapped, in a styrofoam cooler, etc., it was fairly expensive. I just knew there must be a better way.

I finally found something “close enough”–it’s San Pellegrino Limonata. Available at finer stores near you (Molly Stone’s and Whole Foods near me), and mix it half and half with Shiner Bock, and you’re in for not quite the exact thing, but a pretty good version of OK Sarria’s famous (to me at least) clara. Yummmm!

Tags: food, Spain