Wednesday, March 10, 2010
The putrid stench of Round One is still available here.
ROUND TWO
Ellicottville's Nut Brown Ale
Ellicottville’s Nut Brown Ale is from a local brewery, which is what drew my crew to its bottle. We were a fortunate group as it was a light, flavor filled beer with a slightly sweet after-taste. It was good in every way, which made the taste testers wonder if dreams could really come true.
Sam Smith's Oatmeal Stout
Sam Smith’s Oatmeal Stout was initially marketed in the 1800s for lactating mothers, and it could give mother’s milk a run for its money. It’s a slightly sweet, full-bodied beer that doesn’t give you the feeling you’ve just eaten a blended steak. We were surprised how good it was and I wished I had another. After round one, the bar was set low. The Oatmeal Stout showed me that beer could actually taste good AND have a fancy label.
THE WINNER: Sam Smith’s Oatmeal Stout
To be honest, we would have liked to declare the Nut Brown last round’s winner, but that would taint the lofty moral expectations of my readers; so, we made a hard decision. If it was warmer outside, the Nut Brown probably would have won by one baby carriage length.
Inspired by March Madness, I went to Premier, gathered together two six-packs of single bottle beers based on their label’s coolness factor. In other words, if I thought it was cool, I bought it.
How this will work: my friends and I will try two beers; each beer will be competing against the other; and one will be declared the winner. After, we’ve reduced the group to 6, I will choose one that was the best of the bunch based on a highly subjective index that’s so complicated I can’t even explain it myself. Enough talk, let’s drink.
ROUND ONE
Dogfish Head's World Wide Stout
The World Wide Stout is marketed as “a very dark beer brewed with a ridiculous amount of barley.” It doesn’t let you down. It’s a complex beer with a liquor after taste and a kick that makes you shiver. It tasted like it had been strained through a dead person’s veins – that telltale hint of formaldehyde gave it away. It made one person’s lips curl, which I assume is same face a dogfish makes.
Hitachino Nest's Celebration Ale
The Celebration Ale is “brewed with vanilla beans and spices.” It had a sweet flavor with a hint of orange after taste. It seems they decided they wanted to get creative and ran amok. I felt like my tongue had been attacked by Jackson Pollock.
THE WINNER: Hitachino Nest’s Celebration Ale
In the end, the question was which one do we disliked the least. I can only hope this experience gets better as time goes on.
(cc) Andrew Turner
I have been spending most of my waking life on a project I just finished. One of the tools that allowed me to maintain my inner-Fonzi was my ability to quickly create several kinds of visualizations. I’d like to say it’s because of some innate ability, or the some unique genetic confluence , but it’s actually because sophisticated visualization tools are now available to the masses. I thought I’d share what I’ve found to be valuable.
Periodic table of visualization methods: helps you decide on which method to use based on several dimensions, and it just looks really, really cool. http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html#
CmapTools: a free concept mapping tool that allows individuals to collaborate online. It’s not intuitive, but it’s extremely useful. It too looks cool.
http://cmap.ihmc.us/conceptmap.html
XMind: another free tool for creating several kinds of visualizations (fishbones, org. charts, flow charts, mind maps, and concept maps). It’s intuitive, free, can be used collaboratively, and can be opened on any OS (meaning Mac users are included). If you want to do a complicated concept map, CMap is for you, but if you want to do almost any other kind of visualization, try XMind. It maketh YOU look cool when you finish a map.
http://www.xmind.net/
Research and Resources: a site about each dimension of visual literacy. They made the periodic table mentioned above; so, they have a great deal of knowledge to share in this field. These folks are cool.
http://www.visual-literacy.org/pages/documents.htm
