Puck’s Blog

I first encountered the caipirinha at Samaba Restaurant in Vancouver, where our Brazilian waitress explained the importance of the drink to Brazil, where it is their national drink.

First, here’s an excellent video showing how to make one.  I use Splenda in place of the sugar and it turns out just as good.

As you might guess from “lime + sugar + ice + booze” the drink can start off fairly strong.  But, as our waitress told us, in Brazil people will stir their caipirinha and let the ice melt until the mixture is to their taste, and then sip it.  You’ll see people at roadside restaurants everywhere twirling their straws in their ice-filled glasses, waiting for that magical moment.

A good muddler — the stick he calls “tender loving care” — is required.  I’ve tried making them with other methods, but once I got a good wooden muddler the lime zest really came through in the drink’s flavour.

I’ve had no problem finding cachaça locally — it’s in the rum section of both our government liquor store and a private one, at comparable prices to regular rum.  You can make a caiprinha with rum, but it’s not exactly the same — cachaça is a much purer tasting liquor.

No, it’s not a joke: Copyright deal could toughen rules governing info on iPods, computers.

It’s bad enough that they’re planning on joining the USA in their overblown, pro-corporation, anti-personal-freedom DMCA style copyright laws, but in addition:

The deal would create a international regulator that could turn border guards and other public security personnel into copyright police. The security officials would be charged with checking laptops, iPods and even cellular phones for content that “infringes” on copyright laws, such as ripped CDs and movies.

The guards would also be responsible for determining what is infringing content and what is not.

Cross the border and in addition to searching your car for purchases you haven’t claimed, but the border guard can snoop through your iPod and laptop computer looking for unlicensed media!  Don’t bother thinking you have any privacy, because that border guard is going to have to inspect those racy digital photos you and your wife took while on vacation to make sure that they’re not really owned by Disney.

There is absolutely no way we can let this go through.  The DMCA in the US is an utter travesty, and this is worse!

Here’s something I’ve realized about copyright law recently: It’s pro-monopoly.  Monopolies break the proper working of capitalism, which is why there are laws against them.  Material that can be copyrighted — a movie like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, for example — is a mini-monopoly.  Sure, there are other movies out there that can compete, but there is only one company that controls the sales and viewing of that Indiana Jones movie.  The way the law used to work, copyright lapsed after 28 years.  This changed, however, when Mickey Mouse approached 28 and Disney lobbied the government to extend it.  When that extension was almost up, they lobbied again, and again.

It appears that copyright will never, ever lapse because the US government is rolling over the corporations like Disney and allowing them to maintain their mini-monopolies forever.

On top of that, they’re creating laws to make more government employess enforce that monpolistic power!

Don’t let them.  Write your MP.

Humourous update:  Tom the Dancing Bug seems to agree about the Disney copyright problem.

Hey America, I don’t want to come visit, ever. Not only would you be able to declare me an enemy combatant and deny my right for representation to protest that declaration and my imprisonment somewhere (habeus corpus is for LOSERS, apparently) but now you’ve got ridiculous mini-tyrants telling people they can’t take photos in subway stations because of “the law” and “terrorism”… or take photos of weigh-stations. And if you take photos of the Port of Los Angeles, FBI Agents will come to your home to investigate you!

What the FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOUR COUNTRY?

Why aren’t you Americans up in arms about this?

And more importantly, why has The Daily Show not made fun of this ridiculousness?

Just testing Wordpress 2.5’s image handling capabilities by posting this picture of me & Patton Oswalt.  I was out of it from cold medicine, and Patton seemed to want to get out of there but was totally cool with posing for a pic with me.

Ok, so there was a problem with 2.5’s image handling and IE (I use Maxthon which uses IE to render the page, but has tons of great features IE doesn’t have).  I found this Wordpress Troubleshooting Forum post and the IE-Fix files fixed my problem!

My name is Joe Fulgham, though most people who know me online call me “Puck”, even when meeting in real life.

I’m a self-employed web designer and love my job.

I’ve been married since July 20th, 2002 to Melany (Hamill) and we’re doing great.  No kids, but that’s the way we want it.  We have a Boston Terrier named Loki who is adorable, smart, and fun.

For fun I play road hockey, golf, and play a heck of a lot of games, both traditional (board, card, etc.) and video games (PC mostly, though I own a 360).

I’m a skeptic, athiest and a scientist in that I believe in the Scientific Method over the 2000 year old writings of wandering desert nomads.

“It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” - Carl Sagan