About six months ago, I needed to buy a new computer. I knew the MacBook Air was the right machine for me. Easily more portable than my heavy MacBook Pro, and powerful enough for just about anything. I struggled, however, over which model to buy: the 11-inch or the 13-inch. The 11-inch was clearly smaller and lighter, but I feared I would miss the increased screen real estate of the 13-inch. Those fears were misplaced. I went with the 11-inch and I love it. Compared to my wife’s 13-incher, it’s much easier to grab and go with one hand. As a result, I end up taking it with me much more often. The key is that the screen is quite wide due to the 16:9 aspect ratio (compared to the more typical 16:10 ratio of Macs past). While one might think that height is more important in this web-centric age, it’s actually width that is key for working with multiple windows simultaneously (e.g. a web page and a text file, or two text documents). The 11″ Air’s screen hits a sweet spot, and I have no trouble getting real work done on it. I should note, however, that when I’m at my desk, it’s hooked up to the massive 27″ Thunderbolt Display, so the calculus may be somewhat different for those who don’t plan to use an external monitor.

Despite that, I’m quite happy to work with this machine as a laptop alone. Do be sure to buy the model with 4 GB of RAM, as you can’t upgrade it later. I decided to stick with the standard 1.6 Ghz processor, however, given some complaints that the upgraded 1.8 Ghz model is prone to more heat generation and noise issues.

I came home earlier this evening hoping to relax and prepare a nice dinner. After entering the kitchen and switching on the lights, a shadow seemed to flash by. A moth, I thought. It must have snuck in when we opened the door.

But something told me it was no moth. The shadow seemed too large and it was too cold outside for moths.

Another flutter past my head and into the living room. This time I saw the distinct flap of wings. “Was that a bird?” I wondered aloud to my wife, realizing that birds had almost certainly gone south. I cautiously approached the living room. I switched on the lights and the wings fluttered into the adjacent family room, which was still dark. I stepped closer and switched on the lights. Slowly, carefully, I peered around the corner. My fears were confirmed. Perched upside down, high up on the crown molding was a bat. Now we’ve dealt with the land-based rodent invaders in the past, but there’s something particular disturbing about having a bat flying around your house. Or even, as it was at present, hanging around your house.

We needed a plan of attack. We sent our son upstairs and closed the door that connected the living and family rooms to the rest of the house. We needed to get this thing O-U-T. So I propped open the front door (which connects to the living room) and then donned battle gear to protect me from a potential bat assault. The battle gear, in this case, consisted of hastily collected snow gloves, a winter hat, and a broom. For good measure, I added a flashlight to the mix (the idea being that bats like darkness and thus the flashlight could serve as a bat-saber of sorts). Looking completely ridiculous to any outside observer, I hoisted up the broomstick and returned to the family room to drive the bat toward the door.

Bats are sensitive to motion and noise, so a few close waves of the broomstick against the nearby wall was all it took to send the bat fluttering over my cowering head back toward the living room. To my dismay, the dumb creature didn’t fly right out the door as I had clearly set out for it to do, but instead flew back and forth several times across the living room before perching high up in a corner near the ceiling.

I approached again with the broomstick and swooshed near it, like a brave knight approaching the fearsome dragon, only dancing around it in a rather ridiculous manner instead of launching an assault. This succeeded only in several more swoops around the room before it escaped again into the family room. My fellow warrior (a.k.a wife) had been dispatched to the computer to collect intelligence and informed me how I should rearrange the lighting pattern to drive the bat out the door. If lights away from the door were on and those near the door were off, the bat should just eventually find its way out. After several minutes of broomstick swinging and diving for cover were met only with the bat finding new places to perch in the room a new plan of attack was needed. Strangely, yelling “go away, stupid bat” was surprisingly ineffective.

We opened all the windows in both the living room and family room to increase the bats chances at exit, but this only caused us to succeed at making our home a cold, bat-infested house instead of just a bat-infested house. Maybe it was time to throw in the towel. While my wife made a few vain attempts at broom jousting, I scoured the Internet for bat removal services. After a few phone calls, it quickly became apparent that no such service was going to be available on a Sunday evening.

I returned to survey the situation. The bat was now sitting atop a window in the family room. Lacking a butterfly net (which the Internet tells me is one of the better tools for catching these winged bearers of rabies), I searched the house for other approaches. I picked up a wire wastebasket and walked around the house with it for a few minutes before realizing that the holes in the mesh may be suboptimal while trying to prevent claws or teeth from inflicting damage. After a long search, I settled on a plastic storage box from the basement.

I slowly approached the pest and carefully lowered the transparent box on top of it. Surprisingly, it didn’t move, but stayed glued to the window frame. I carefully slid the box lid between the mouth of the box and the wall, eventually knocking the bat down into the box. In a panicked motion, I swooped the box downward, slid the lid into place, and clamped it shut. My prisoner was safe inside.

My wife and I rushed to close all the windows, lest any family members of this fellow decide to join in the fun. Once the house was secure, I took our friend down to the sidewalk and slowly removed the lid, jumping back as it clattered to the ground. The dumb creature just crawled along the bottom of the box. “Idiot,” I thought, “this is your chance at freedom. Fly away while you still can!” This bat was going to need some more encouragement. Using the box lid, I gave the side of the box a firm push, knocking it onto its side. The bat seemed startled at first, but finally got the message and flew into the trees.

I returned home, empty box in hand, weary, but victorious. Maybe next time I won’t get upset when we forget to turn out the lights.

My early experiences with sous vide, the cooking of vacuum-sealed food in a tightly temperature-controlled water bath, has been decidedly mixed. My first experience ended with unacceptably mushy steak, which I later discovered was due to excessively prolonged cooking of the tender cuts of beef I chose.

Eggs, often touted as one of the particular strengths of the method, were my next target. According to Douglas Baldwin’s widely-used sous vide cookbook, the “perfect egg” can be achieved by cooking an egg in its shell at 148° F for 45-60 minutes. The results were – interesting. Maybe some people consider the egg “perfect”. It was quite runny and had a somewhat custard-like texture. I’m not a huge fan of boiled eggs in any form, so I may not be the right person to judge this. I tried another version at 167 degrees, but it tasted just like a hard boiled egg to me. One of the issues here is the nature of sous vide. It cooks the entire egg evenly, but I suspect many people prefer a slightly more cooked white and a slightly runnier yolk.

Baldwin’s recipe for pulled pork was my next target. Chunks of pork shoulder (affectionately known as “Boston Butt” – which I sent my poor wife to request at the supermarket) are brined in a mixture of kosher and smoked salt for one day, then the meat is cooked at 160° F for another 24 hours. The resulting pork had a great texture, easily chopped or mashed with a fork to produce the classic pulled-pork texture. The main flavoring then becomes whatever barbecue sauce you prefer. I used an old favorite I had tried in Minneapolis from Famous Dave’s. The result was pretty good. It could use a bit more smokey flavor, and may also benefit from a finishing broil or torch. Some other recipes use a spice rub, which I think could really make the pork more interesting.

Having failed with my first set of steaks, I tried again with a tenderloin at 130°F, but this time limiting my cooking time to 2 hours and finishing with a quick sear on the grill. The steak came out great both times I’ve tried it and I can truly say I felt it was better than other methods I’ve tried. The beef flavor seemed stronger. I seasoned before sealing once and after remove from the bag another time. There wasn’t a big difference, but the second method seemed to result in less fluid loss from the steak during cooking. My wife wasn’t as impressed with her New York strip steak. I thought the tenderloin tasted better, but I prefer this stake via any cooking method. A flank steak cooked for 6 hours came out great as well, though it was used for burritos, not as a plain steak.

I also tried salmon, which is usually a particular challenge to cook because of its uneven thickness (which also makes it a great candidate for sous vide). While Baldwin recommends 140° F for 40 minutes, this seemed too high to me, so after reading online I first did a quick brine for 20 minutes (6 tablespoons for 1 quart – probably too little) in a Ziploc bag sitting in an ice water bath. I then cooked at 130 for 20 minutes with a brief broil to finish after seasoning with pepper, garlic and oil. The salmon was surprisingly not mushy at all, even firmer than with the traditional approach, though this probably reflects the brining. The fish was perfectly cooked throughout. I’m not sure it was any better than the traditionally cooked salmon, but it required much less monitoring. It’s also hard to differentiate the effects of the brine from the sous vide approach.

“It’s the best way to cook steak (or chicken, or fish). It tastes better than you can possibly imagine.”

“You can’t overcook the food. It always comes out perfect.”

“Once you try it, you can never go back.”

These promises of culinary nirvana drove me to invest in a make-shift laboratory setup to try to reproduce the cooking technique of “sous vide” (French for “under vacuum”). The concept is simple. The biggest challenge with cooking many types of foods, particularly meats, is to ensure that the food is cooked evenly and to the proper temperature. With a good meat thermometer and plenty of practice, you can do pretty well, but the idea of sous vide is to eliminate any potential barriers to perfect. The concept is simple: vacuum seal the piece of meat in food-grade, heat-tolerate plastic, then place it in a water bath at the target temperature. As long as you leave it there for long enough, the meat will equilibrate to the temperature of the water bath. You can have a medium-rare steak that’s perfectly cooked throughout. Chicken won’t dry out because it’s cooked in a sealed package.

This vision drove me to purchase the SousVide Magic, a PID controller: basically a box that can be connected to a thermometer and power a heater. Using some fancy calculations, it figures out how to turn the heater on and off at the appropriate frequency based on the measured temperature of your water bath and the desired temperature. I paired this with the FreshMeals Magic immersion heater and a tub with 10L of water. Yesterday morning, before heading to work, I vacuum sealed a tenderloin (filet mignon) and a top loin steak and dropped them in the water bath, set to 130 degrees.

About 12 hours later, I was ready to enjoy culinary perfection. Since sous vide can’t provide the nicely browned exterior on its own, the steaks need to be seared prior to eating. No problem. They looked great. I sat down and dug in to a extremely tender tenderloin that…had a mushy consistency reminiscent of tuna fish. I forced myself to eat the entire thing, but it unquestionably a step down from the traditional grill experience. It was only later I discovered that, while prolonged cooking is great for tenderizing normally tough cuts of beef, it can ruin the tender cuts I was trying to eat.

I’m still hoping that there’s something to this technique.

It’s been 3 weeks since Steve Jobs died. The response in the press has been much more substantial than I expected, partially fueled by the lead-up to and release of the Walter Isaacson biography. It’s no doubt, though, that the loss is felt most strongly by Apple fans. This is not because of any personal attachment to Steve. We didn’t know him, or really even what he was like. It is important what he represented.

The mid-90s were a tough time for Apple fans – the company was regularly referred to in the press as “beleaguered”, and the general perception was of a company in the last throes of a prolonged decline. Despite the gloomy atmosphere, there was still one event which could bring home: the annual Macworld Expo. Apple regularly announced major products at these conferences, and each year there was the hope that a killer product, something that could restore the company to its former glory, would emerge. It never did, though, and I often debated about jumping ship (ironically enough, the alternative platform I flirted most with was the NeXT).

When you’re a kid, it’s easy to get excited about an event like a birthday, or a holiday like Christmas. This year could bring a really cool new toy. As you get older, these events lose some of their luster, and serve more as a mere marker of the passing years. This is what Macworld Expos were beginning to feel like.

Then Steve returned and the Expos became exciting again. The new products were actually interesting. Before the rumor sites got so aggressive, we’d often have no idea what would be in store for us. Those of us excited by technology actually had new things to be excited about. It restored that childhood Christmas. When he was bearded and before his dramatic weight loss, Jobs even began to look a bit like Santa Claus. Eventually, the Expos gave way to more unpredictably timed Apple events, but in a way it was more exciting, because any week could bring Christmas.

There will certainly be more products from Apple. What’s less clear is whether that same magic will be there.

Who will show up next time? A new Santa, or just some guy in a Santa costume?

Tasks have traditionally been an afterthought in iOS and MobileMe. Until iOS5, the operating system didn’t even include a task list. That changed with the new reminder’s app. What may be less obvious is that, with iCloud, it’s now possible to share your task list with someone else.

Reminders have now been separated from standard calendars in iCloud, and can be independently managed. If you log in to iCloud.com and switch to the calendar, you’ll see a list of both standard calendars and reminder lists on the left. These can be easily shared with another individual by clicking the sharing icon to the right of each list name.

You can set a default reminder list in iOS and Mac OS, so that new reminders are assigned to the appropriate list.

For many Apple followers, particularly iPhone 4 owners, yesterdays’ iPhone 4S announcement can be summed up using one word: disappointing. The reason is simple: internal changes don’t create the same impact as external ones. The new phone could have had twice the battery life, 10 times the processing power, and new location capabilities that could pinpoint your location to a single square inch, and it would still feel disappointing if it looked the same as the prior phone. We are, for the most part, visual beings. If something looks the same as something else, we think at some fundamental, unshakable level that it must BE the same. In contrast, relatively minor internal changes paired with a dramatic visual overhaul would feel like a new phone.

I don’t think the importance of this should be dismissed. Many would-be upgraders, particularly those with iPhone 4′s who might have traded up for a redesigned phone, will hold off. It’s a real danger for Apple, and I’m sure they know it. No one knows for sure, but I suspect the 4S was a plan B. Apple had hopes to combine the internal changes with a visual overhaul, but it just couldn’t happen in time, and they were already delayed from their usual cycle.

The internal changes, however, are not insignificant. The phone will be dramatically faster. The camera quality appears to be significantly increased, addressing issues with low light performance and video stability; for many the iPhone might now legitimately replace both a point-and-shoot and a camcorder. How can these changes not be significant motivators to upgrade for people like me who use their phone for everything. All. The. Time. Add to this dramatic, and possibly game-changing voice recognition – scratch that – voice COMPREHENSION, and how can existing users not be driven to upgrade?

Because it looks the same. And if it looks the same, it must BE the same.

Some may argue that the 4S is missing some technologic features as well, such as LTE, NFC, and a larger screen. This is true, but in practice, most of these don’t make much of a difference. A larger screen might be nice, but change the ergonomics of the device and potentially power consumption as well. If Apple pushes screen size too far, it either creates a headache for developers who have to retool their apps or drops the resolution to below their much-marketed retina threshold. LTE (or “4G”) has great promise for boosting speeds when WiFi is unavailable, but current chips are seriously detrimental to battery life. Furthermore, LTE coverage in Verizon is limited to a handful of cities, in AT&T to 4 cities, and in Sprint to 0 cities. Worldwide, there’s a similar lack of support. It just doesn’t make sense as a major feature for 2011. NFC? Google is trying to push their wallet, and the technology looks impressive, but there still isn’t an obvious use. Apple doesn’t launch hardware features that have no demonstrable use for their users.

But it still looks the same.

AppleInsider | Apple’s iPhone 4 ship times slip ahead of iPhone 5 debut

All new iPhone 4 orders in the U.S. now take one to three business days to ship through Apple, a sign that the company is running low on inventory ahead of introducing its fifth-generation model.

More importantly, this is a sign that Apple is not following the prior model of continuing to sell the “old” version of the iPhone as the low end model. Further supports the idea that we’ll see a new low-end device (perhaps off-contract) and a higher end iPhone 5.

Most intriguing theory I’ve heard is that an off-contract iPhone will replace the iPod Touch, though I’m not sure if that’s financially viable.

Chocolate consumption and cardiometabolic disorders: systematic review and meta-analysis — Buitrago-Lopez et al. 343 — bmj.com

The highest levels of chocolate consumption were associated with a 37% reduction in cardiovascular disease (relative risk 0.63 (95% confidence interval 0.44 to 0.90)) and a 29% reduction in stroke compared with the lowest levels.

Didn’t Woody Allen call this in Sleeper?

There’s a debate about the significance of the timing of Jobs’ resignation. Initial theories about a rapid decline in health now seem to be dispelled. Some think it’s to lock in Tim Cook, but why now instead of months ago, or months in the future?

His health appears to be on a permanent downward trajectory, so this transition is inevitable. But a transition now accomplishes several things.

Jobs is getting weaker. In the last keynote, his voice (up until the iCloud portion) was thin and he appeared frail. I suspect he didn’t think he could hold up through another presentation. If he’s not giving the next keynote, the story will no longer be that he’s not giving the keynote; now it’s expected.

This is not an abstract issue. Apple is clearly preparing to announce at least one new iPhone next month (or in early October). Jobs, and the rest of Apple, want that announcement to be about the products, not about him.

Why wait until he’s deathly ill to make the transition? Reports suggest he’s still healthy enough to remain engaged in product planning and meetings, but not at the level required of a CEO. Transitioning to Chariman makes perfect sense. He can supervise the transition to Cook and make sure everything goes smoothly (though in a real sense, he’s already handed over the reigns).

Though perhaps its somewhat morose, this transition gives him some dignity and privacy. Chairman is a role he never needs to retire from. He can stay in the role until he’s gone, remaining as active as he can be. No more questions about when or if he will return. No questions about who’s in charge.

Lastly, Apple is at the top of its game. Handily disposing of many of its competitors, rocketing sales, and vying for largest market cap of any company. Jobs took a company on its deathbed and took it to first place. He’s won. He can leave a champion.