кухненско обзавежданеThis is a list of ten memorable restaurants in the Atlanta, GA area that I have been to (over the past, say, three years) who meet the following criteria:
Good for entertaining (bringing clients/dates/friends&family)
Excellent waitstaff
Menu includes vegetarian-friendly options as well as interesting options for those with a standard North American diet.

This is in no way an exhaustive list, only some highlights that have ranked very high with both myself and guests. A lot of these have been venues for various dates, and some have been used as meeting spots when friends have come to visit from out-of-state. The vast majority of my dining out has been with non-vegetarians, so there’s a resistance for hitting all-vegan or entirely-vegetarian restaurants. Each of these has great vegetarian options available right on the menu, so that ordering doesn’t feel like you are asking them to remodel the kitchen with a “special request” when all you want is an option that is carcass-free. Some of these are much more formal, and some are very casual. All of them are exciting spaces that are also quiet enough for conversation.

On to the list (not in ranked order):

1. La Tavola (latavolatrattoria) – This is one that comes to mind any time a special occasion comes up. When friends or family come to visit, when it’s someone’s birthday, any time I have an excuse to go, really. La Tavola is fun and interesting, has some really great veg options, and has a way of being formal and nice without being rigid or stuffy. The dining area can be very full at prime times, but there are really wonderful tables on the deck out back which are fantastic for spring brunch/lunch… (hint, hint. This week? Anyone?)
2. Eros (erostapas) – Tapas and music. Right off I-85 at Monroe Drive, It’s in the multi-level what-used-to-be bank building. The tapas are great, and the space creates an interesting indoor-outdoor “patio” feel. It’s a great spot for a gathering, since it’s finger foods and music, as well as space that’s easy to move around in.
3. Sugo (sugorestaurant) – Sugo has a fusion of Italian and Greek influences. Their staff is very friendly and knowledgeable. The food is spectacular. All three of their locations are North of the perimeter.
4. Artistry (No known URL) – I’m not clear about whether this one has recently closed, is currently being renovated, or if it has recently changed hands. I had a great experience there. It was well-appointed, had live jazz musicians, and the food was great. My date on that night still mentions from time to time how awesome the steak and the shrimp was. I ate like a king on a wide variety of veg hors d’oeuvres. The waitstaff completely bent over backward. I hope they aren’t closed.
5. Thai Spice (thaispiceatlanta) – This is Thai done beautifully, and with a lot of style. It’s the best Thai I’ve tried north of the perimeter.
6. The Flying Biscuit (flyingbiscuit) – There’s nothing wrong with the various new locations as they became a chain, but I’m talking specifically about the original location just outside of Candler Park. There’s a completely different feel to this one. I was floored by the devil “burger”, but when you’re looking for something more “down home”, There’s nothing like the vegan bbq burrito.
7. Buddha (no known URL) – This gem is right off I-75/I-85 at the end of the 10th Street bridge. Mostly Chinese fare, they have an extensive vegetarian menu, and are open incredibly late, which is handy, since it’s around the corner from Primal, and just a few blocks from Door44, Sutra, Opera, etc.
8. Mambo Italiano (mamboitaliano) – This is a really neat traditional Italian place with a wonderful staff. The place is decorated like 1950s Italian. Great veg lasagne, good drinks.
9. Octane (octanecoffee) – This is a wonderful independent cafe with great plates coming from the kitchen, some of the best baristas in North America(They kick butt every year in local, regional, and world barista competitions), and the space is relaxed, yet abuzz. Maybe it’s the caffeine. They have a second location near Emory University that I really should check out, since that would be much closer for me.
10. Ecco (ecco-atlanta) – Of all the restaurants on this list, it’s been the longest since I’ve been to Ecco. Ecco is managed by the same group as La Tavola. It’s a much more formal dining experience than La Tavola, and I did a full review after my first trip there..

Where are your favorite dining spots in Atlanta? Leave a comment and let me know.

The first thing I saw this morning when I was looking at tech news was this article:

E-book apps for the iPad

The iPad is already more or less an e-book reader and web tablet, but because of it’s proprietary bending, we see immediate development work in order to enable it to handle Kindle and Nook proprietary formats, as well as to enable instant and user-friendly sales for Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

I think it’s funny that because of the lack of a true standard and due to various competing DRM practices, once you have spent gobs of cash on your new tablet reader hardware, you will need to immediately download apps that will allow it to also become an e-book reader, or an e-book reader.

Still, between the two designated devices, I still lean toward the Nook. I big reason for this is the longevity factor based on little things like having a replaceable battery and being an Android-based device.

I used a Sony PDA years ago as more or less an e-book reader, and it worked out really well. At the time, I was able to convert several of my textbooks to PDF easily, and some were even forward-thinking enough to provide a standard PDF of the text in the purchase of the textbook. I loved having a backpack’s worth of books available in the palm of my hand, being able to read my assigned chapters one-handed while on transit on the way to and from work each day, and being able to both highlight and make annotations. It made the commute productive, and after getting home, was able to streamline time on research papers and workgroup discussions because I’d already got the reading in.

When between classes, I was able to use the PDA similarly for extracurricular reading. At the time, it was the Harry Potter series, some older Asimov titles, and a load of CS journals.

If I’d had to wrestle with DRM with each of these, I don’t know how I would have had the time at all. Between getting notations synced, getting different titles moved back and forth, and keeping up with all I was working on at the time, the headaches that I hear people struggling with as a symptom of DRM would have been way too much.

When writing code and “in the zone” where the syntax seems to flow effortlessly and a second and third terminal screen show loads of data flitting by exactly as expected, I sometimes imagine the workstation on a giant turntable a la the 80s drummer in MTV videos, and a couple of dancers gettin’ down like this:

The rock star life of a developer, right? or maybe it’s more along the lines of Delusions of Grandeur…. n’est-ce pas?

Being someone who “works with computers,” Family and friends quite often fling random personal hardware into my lap to “fix when you have some spare time.”

This is one of those spare times.

I’ve seen the patient (a late model Dell Inspiron, well apportioned with several hardware options, no signs of abuse or even heavy use) several time now for systems issues.

First it wasn’t showing local drives and had some permissions issues installing any new software, even if you logged in as an admin. There was a small trojan that had dropped a reg key to keep itself from getting uninstalled. I corrected the reg key, put some basic adware/junk filters in place, installed the software in question and returned it, advising a full backup of personal data and a dirty install of windows.

When the patient returned with complaints involving spyware blocking prompts, I thought that the basic crap filter had been left a bit sensitive. Signing on, I found a huge mess.

Starting with the usual review of startup processes, killing off of regular user clutter, I found the gremlin…

The now-famous trojan, Antivirus Home 2009 has been updated, and the patient is singing the Fake AV Blues. Loudly. From the back fence.

Our botnet buddies have included some familiar features, but have ramped things up. The install has become very worm-like. It has the usual home base, but any CPL “uninstall” or use of any of the usual removal tools in your tool belt will make it very defensive.

Even after killing off all of its processes, renaming its executables, and cleaning the tempspace, it sees mbam, spybot, and the stinger, kills them off, puts its OWN fly-by installer in place of the exe of the tool, and hides another install of itself using what looks like randomized names.

I ended up doing a manual kill, very similar to the list found at syschat, but with several new ones added to the list, including:

A load of registry entries that I should have logged, as they were all serial based.
_scui.cpl in a secondary location
lots of copies of a binary batch file, with names like asox, avaxo, tufija
reg files named ylifat, etc
inf files named like xehiger
and lots of copies of the same .dat file in all of the locations mentioned at syschat, but with names like jabocixevu, jihomuri, sevotif

After getting the polyps knocked down, I did a restart, then removed the installs and stubs of all the detect and protect tools because they are all suspect at this point.

Rebooting again, things look much better. For the first couple of minutes. Then a notifier bubble shows up from the task tray with a fake “malware detection” notification. Downloading and installing a fresh mbam install and running it kicks off a new install of antivirus 2010.

Back to square one.

It’s just a pet peeve, but when I hear people in media verbally giving out links, they make a couple of mistakes. These mistakes bleed over into the habits of non-media people,and it’s a really big mess after a few years.
Number one is the nomenclature of the symbols on the keyboard. The slash and backslash are completely different buttons. A slash (/) leans forward. You are reading this text from left to right, as you would in the vast majority of languages in use on this planet (left-to-right-reading languages like Hebrew and Arabic would likely have a completely different nomenclature for the slashes). It’s leaning forward, toward the rest of the line. A BACKslash (\), therefore, leans backward. The slash is generally next to the right-side shift key with the question mark. The backslash is usually above the enter button with the pipe(|) symbol. Since the backslash and pipe are rarely used, the button is generally ignored. In web addresses used in a browser to get to a website, the slashes are just slashes. Any mention of a “backslash” by someone in media to the general public wastes a syllable and confuses anyone who is paying attention. The character that you get when you hold the shift key and press the number 8 is an asterisk (*). Not “asterik”, not swastika.

This week, I’ve been listening to Zero Hour quite a bit. They have an interesting sound that is much like Soundgarden. On this track “The Greatest” has a strong opening guitar part that reminds me of late 80s arena rock, like AC/DC. It builds slowly at first, then drops the shoe, ready to punch you in the eye.
The five-peice mixes classic rock and progressive in an interesting, strong blend that’s great for the gym or for short sprints (running or racing, your choice). The tracks on this album show a good range and variety, always centering on the story of the lyrics, highlighting the harmonies with solid axe play. It’s a really good production. New Mexico is a long way off, So I’m hoping that they tour the East Coast sometime. If you like your riffs a bit harder than what you hear in this track, be sure to listen to “Another Nail”.

I completely stumbled onto Alexa Ray Joel, and liked what I was hearing, before it started to dawn on me exactly *who* I was hearing. I have a feeling that this is the kind of thing she would prefer from new fans.

This is the first single from her second album, her first featured her own artwork, and sampled herwide range from folk/country to alt-pop, and into jazz. This track would sit gingerly in the pop-jazz area. Reminiscient of Corrine Bailey Rae and Billie Holiday, The writing has strong hooks and the arrangements are balanced.

As stated above, I got into the track for a while before finding out more about who she is. The tipoff to some of you would have been the Joel surname. She’s the daughter of Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley.

This week, I was listening to a lot of tracks in the “world” section of AmieStreet, and wanted to spotlight Pulsion. The tonality and composition is almost dreamlike in the guitars. This reminds me of some of the masters of guitar intros. Check it out!