RenFest things

Pouring beer for Flat Earth at the RenFest on Sunday is always amusing. I always enjoy the RenFest. There are the costumes people wear which are crazy and outrageous. There are some very fetching women very sexy in costumes. There are cool costumes. I especially saw one of articulated leather armour this man made for himself. All the tooling and articulation handled by himself. It was a true work of art. Getting hit on by women at my age is flattering. I think anyone would be flattered. It is nice to know that women still have an attraction to me. I cannot think why as I am chubby, greying, and short. The beers we poured were Black Helicopter, Bermuda Triangle, Belgian Pale, and Angry Planet. Lots of kilts all around and bagpipes by Twin Cities Metro. The best thing however was the ratcatcher. I was talking to his understudy a young man who ahs been doing the routine for a several years. He told me the original ratcatcher came to the fest once in awhile to do some comedy for the fun of it. Phil and I saw him in his old form.He was doing everthing adlib, extemporaneously with the crowd and the crowd loved it. I loved it as I hadn't laughed that hard in awhile.

Golden Beer things

Saturday evening, we had a critical mass of people to do a wee bit of analysis on golden beers. Now these golden beers could be any style as long as they were golden in colour. We tasted Oh, Brother! tripel from Two Bros.; Gouden Carolus, Cuvee de Keiser 2008; Granite City Wit and hefeweizen; Andrew & Rick's Tripel; Biere Blanche de Celtique from Britainny; Bermuda Triangle from Flat Earth; The two standout beers of the evening were Gouden Carolus and Blanche de Celtique. the judges were Bob & Michele McKenzie, Mark & Shona (bob's sister), Andrew, Damian, Katje, Brent, and dennis.

Weekend things

The weekend is upon us and upon me. K is off taking her daughter to University. They are driving through the day and will arrive there tonight. I am planning on playing and having some good fun. Friday night will be boardgaming with Greg, George, Walter, and Nick. Saturday off to the St. Paul Farmer's Market and listen to the Eddie's. Maybe work on the chimney in Quebec, maybe not. With K gone this affords me time to get away and go to a movie I want to see without this feeling of guilt or accommodation. Saturday is this summer's Golden Beer Fest, formerly the Yellow Beer Fest. Bring your favorite yellow beer to taste and share. Belgians will be prominent. Speaking of Belgian, I think of Belgium and going to see Belgium again. What a beautiful country and people especially the Flemings. The tasting should be fun as we have a number of people coming and it should be good fun.

Web 2.0 things

I am coming to the end of my class on web 2.0. It is rather sad as I had loads of fun looking at all these new things on the Internet. Now comes the hard part, not the final project, I already have that one nailed down. The actual decisions on what to utilities and web sites to use and what to discard and back out of. I have an account in Delicious but it seems that people are more interested in Diigo. Investigate further. FaceBook and MySpace, what are the things too keep me in one and not the other. 2ndLife, I want to see and experience it myself, however, do I really need to have a second life when my first life is so full? I see the benefits and uses of Flickr, wikis, and Youtube. My pictures will be organized in Flickr around my folders where I have been. I have created a wiki for my department using Peanut Butter (my final project). I have also created a wiki for the Monday night wargamers group using Wetpaint. This may not be the best one for this purpose but we can at least get our information started and explore another venue. A friend suggested Ning as an alternative. We'll check it out. I am also looking at sites that permit you to have everything right on a tool bar so you can monitor your sights all the time Flock and Yoono are two.

Pipeband Championships things

Scottish Pipeband Championships
This is a link to the Scottish 2008 championships held in May 2008. This last weekend was the World Championships in Glasgow on Glasgow Green, Simon Fraser University won the Championship.

RenFest Things

We went to the RenFest early on Sunday morning arriving for the opening cannon. We are Katherine, Brent, Karen, and myself. We watched the new Snot, Snot jr. in Puke & Snot jr. It was just an excellent show. They skewed and screwed politicians especially republican politicians every which way. It was hilarious. I haven't seen them in years and it was really good. We saw the Arabian horse show and fire eaters. We saw Cassandra belly dance first and Alea second, latyer in the day. I started off the day drinking some fine Egyptian mead which is superb and followed by a second one later in the day. A hot day and alcohol especially mead can be a little bit too much. We saw the Vilification Tennis match which was hilarious. About mid-day we took a lunch break with apricot wheat ale and food. I made black bean salsa and K made couscous with summer squash. Both tasted great. It was a good day. We really bought nothing. I pretty much followed them around and did what they wanted to do save for watching Alea. She was an amazing dancer with a very lovely sensuous body. It is always a pleasure seeing and admiring a beautiful woman.

Things Beer Judging

I will be judging for the Minnesota State Fair homebrew competition tonight at the Fairgrounds. I have done it the last few years and it is always fun as I see people I haven't seen for awhile. Try some homebrews and write good comments and hopefully gentle in comments about their efforts. I had a couple of disasters myself in my brewing career i.e. a Holiday ale with too much cloves. What I learned was that a little bit of cloves goes a long way.

Granite City things

Stopped at Granite City Brewery & restaurant last night with my friend Brent. We shared a pizza bbq chicken and a couple of hefeweizens,their seasonal. The hefeweizen was very refreshing and in very good form. It had a good taste, mouth feel, the characteristic esters banana and clove were there. I think it was a very successful tasty beer. Most of the time we talked about everything under the sun. Gaming, miniatures, women, beer, surgery, and Renfest.

Things Flat Earth

Last night I went over to the Acadia cafe for a beer release of the Ovni from Flat Earth Brewing. Ovni is made in the style of a bier de garde. It was fun being there and supporting Jeff, the owner and brewer at Flat Earth. None of my friends made it as they were busy with other things. I had a couple of pints of Cygnus-X1 porter which was perfect for a summer's evening.

things ships

Duluth harbour, 1 August 2008: Damian and I roll into Duluth at 9:30 am hoping to view the three wooden ships in the harbour for their Maritime Fest. They were the U.S. Brig Niagara, The Madeleine, and the Pride of Baltimore II. There must have been 10,000 people there waiting to see the ships and mostly to see the Niagara. It was a bloody long line and we were in it for 4 1/2 hours. Standing in the sun as it was a near perfect day in Duluth with gentle breezes, warm temperatures, and beautiful skies. It was pretty neat to see the Niagara and be on deck. It is a pretty small ship when you compare it to the U.S. Frigate Constitution or HMS Victory. However, it was still pretty darn cool. I saw the other ships from dockside but didn't go on. I think I would do that again but perhaps go through the smaller lines first.