Author: Aaron Weber

Mods vs. Rockers in Brighton

May 18, 1964: Brighton turns into a battleground between warring teenage gangs. Of course, now, the mods and rockers actually have their rallies together, and they don’t fight so much as reminisce about the good old days.

Tonight, if I’m lucky, I’ll be right near Brighton (Boston’s Brighton, of course), at O’Brien’s in Allston at the 2005 Boston Scooter Rally run by the Boston Stranglers and associated nogoodniks. Actually from my experience they’re all very nice folks, the sort to wave to anyone else on two wheels.

Asking for it…

A new Motorcycle USA article begins: “If ever there was a motorcycle manufacturer as committed to achieving aesthetic success as functional prowess, it would be Ducati.” They apparently mean this as a compliment.

For those of you who are not me, this is funny because: Ducati is known for tempermental (or genuinely unreliable) bikes, and while their styling is mostly excellent, it also draws a fair bit of criticism. Motorcyclist Magazine said the Monster S2R “looked like it crashed into the plumbing department at Home Depot.”

Oh dear. I’m telling jokes that require explanation.

Special Occasion Restaurants: Evoo, Aquitaine

Sometimes, people ask me where they should go for dinner. Maybe this is because they think I’m a smug know-it-all, and maybe it’s because they respect my opinion, but regardless, I have lots of restaurant opinions. For a special-occasion meal in the greater Boston area I have two picks I want to share with you.

Acquitaine is in Boston itself and has a rather traditional bistro menu: try the hangar steak, or anything roasted. They also have an incredible little bar up front, and quite a few people seem to go there just for drinks. The wine list is quite extensive, and the bar has all sorts of small-batch cordials and liqueurs which make the cocktails there really special. One drink involved gin and cassis, a combination which was really good at the bar but which I could not successfully replicate at home. I’ve spoken about the place with a few other people and all of them have agreed with me that it’s excellent.

My absolute favorite place in the area, however, is Evoo, which is actually in Somerville. It’s the sort of contemporary American restaurant that tells you exactly where your baby lettuces are grown. They combine flavors and influences from around the world, but never lose clarity or direction the way these sort of “fusion” places can. Favorites include a salad of celery, watercress, feta, and tart strawberries, a dish called “Duck Duck Goose” consisting of duck prepared two ways and goose prepared one, and the sublime lemon-raspberry tart (really, I’ve never had such a perfect crust). The Evoo wine list is short enough to be manageable, reasonably priced, and populated with some interesting bottles, including a couple of really nice cavas I haven’t seen anywhere else. I do love a place that serves champagne by the glass.

Of the dozen or so people I’ve gotten to try the place, only two disliked it, mostly on the basis that they don’t like their food to touch or have more than one flavor at a time. One guy looked at the sauce on his pecan-crusted salmon and said “oh god, it’s everywhere.” I have not spoken to him since.

Linux “Growing Pains” Actually Not Painful

My grandmother, of all people, pointed this Wall Street Journal article out to me this week. The article suggests that Linux is in trouble, because people have liked it in minor roles and now are considering it for more difficult and important ones. In other words, it’s done fine in what the analysts call “edge computing” — file, print, the IT guy’s desktop, web servers — and now people are checking to see if it meets requirements for desktops and data centers.

The Journal implies that this second evaluation is a sign that Linux isn’t up to the task. I think it is up to the task, and that the ongoing evaluation is a sign that businesses tend to look before leaping when it comes to technology (Would you spend a million bucks on something without trying it out first? Didn’t think so). Still, even if people evaluate it for central roles and don’t like it, I disagree entirely with the idea that excellence at one level leading to consideration for another can really be called “growing pains.”

I would call it success.

Hello My Name is Aaron Weber

Hello my name is Aaron Weber and I am wearing a silly hat. I am here to discuss free software. I am here to discuss the relative merits of the National and American League when compared to leading CRM systems. Or was it the differences between Novell Linux Desktop and a used car salesman. (The answer is, the used car salesman knows how to track fertility cycles, and the software doesn’t strictly know anything, because it isn’t a person.)

I’m not really sure what’s going on at this point, except that I am dehydrated and my voice is shot and my feet are killing me. I did go to a fun karaoke bar last night though.

Ladies Online

Amazing what women can do, huh? Clueless boys like me and Larry Summers might be behind the times on things like this, but apparently there are women using the internet.

See, a job search or an instant message or a plane ticket is genderless, and therefore without a lot more intrusive data, I can’t tell whether women and men are using them in relatively equal proportions. Even if they are, I still can’t tell whether the businesspeople behind those products and services were thinking about both men and women in their audiences, or whether women are, as they so often have in the past, doing stuff despite the fact that it’s built for, designed for, tested on, men. On the internet, nobody knows if that dancing food was made to dance by a boy or a girl.

The odds, however, indicate that it was a boy. If you’re reading this you’re probably not a technologically impaired person, and it probably seems odd to you that such people exist. But they do, and they are more likely to be women than men. In my life, I know several people who barely get the email thing, all of them women. And of the techies I know… well, let’s just say my office is a total sausagefest. I don’t know why that is, and I don’t care to speculate.

But when there is a web service just for women, then you know who its users are. Duh.
— I just welcome signs that web developers are thinking about and caring about women in their audience, whether the software is gender-specific or not. (I have no idea, of course, whether the authors of OvuSoft or FertilityFriend are women, although I do know that mencal was written by a boy as a birthday gift for his girlfriend.)

“Starved,” A New Comedy about Eating Disorders

In the history of bad TV ideas, I’m not sure where to rank a comedy about eating disorders. It’s probably up there with the Star Wars Christmas Special or something. It’s just… so… awful.

Now, difficult subjects and comedy are not totally incompatible, but it takes a real genius to pull off that kind of thing– Life is Beautiful is a beautiful movie about life and love and laughter that just happens to be set during the holocaust. But let’s be honest here, Roberto Benignis don’t just grow on trees. They sprout wild like truffles and have to be hunted by trained pigs on leashes in the pristine Benigni fields of mountainous Italy.

Do they have comedic geniuses? Probably not. I mean, even the promotions are dumb, too: they’re advertising it in my gym. Next to the ad about how you’re really tough if you show up at the gym at 7AM with a hangover. (You’ll need our powerful deodorant then, because you’ll smell like the sewer you slept in. Or is that the sewer that is your bloodstream? I can’t tell which, they’re pretty close in consistency. How about a campaign for “You’ve got the shakes and puking, but at least you’re not sweating, because you’re a Mitchum Junkie!”)

Another way we can tell they’re not doing this out of a strange sense of genius: they’d be looking for new territory, and Mike Leigh did this back in 1990 in the film “Life is Sweet”. That movie, despite its description and pitch as a “comedy,” is one of the most depressing things I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen some depressing movies. (Naturally, being a Mike Leigh movie, it’s about totally screwed up British people and is horribly depressing with a slight dose of stiff-upper-lip humor: her boyfriend is the sensitive one and she just uses him for sex… of course, they’re both still miserable.)

So far, they’ve made a pilot and one episode. Maybe they’ll get as far as three or four before they remove the feeding tubes (ha ha get it?) and let the brain-dead creature die.