just fyi, I don’t really have much to say lately. For all intents and purposes, consider this blog abandoned.

Finally got around to eating at Cocoa tonight. Short version: nice place. I’d have no problems visiting again in the future. I found it just a little pricy, though portions were ample and the food was well-executed.

I had popcorn shrimp with ‘dynamite’ sauce, which was nice and spicy if a little on the salty side. My wife started with a tempura California roll that was not only delicious, but entrée sized.

Speaking of entrées, I had a tortellini special, with a cream sauce, veal, and tomatoes. It was decadent. My wife got a really nice piece of salmon from the regular menu; it was also excellent.

We were stuffed and had to bring most of our entrées home, so no word on the dessert situation.

Overall, Cocoa is a quality addition to the West Hartford center scene. They’ve got outdoor seating in both the front and back of the building, if that’s your sort of thing. Given the awesome appetizers we had, Cocoa is also a worthy choice for just getting drinks and apps, too.

Update, 5/13/09: They stopped with the obnoxious advertising (at least for now) – this morning’s Courant.com doesn’t have a mouseover action anywhere in evidence. I don’t know whether to celebrate that I can read the Courant online again or be disappointed that my self-righteous rant is no longer pertinent .

As someone who checks the Courant’s site most days to see what’s up in CT, I’ve been meaning to make note of this.

Above we find the Courant’s home page, an actual unretouched screenshot in all of its mouseover-happy flash-based glory. Seriously, all it’s lacking is Bonzi Buddy and I’d be right back in the web circa 1999/2000. I know, I know…ad revenue needed to keep the site afloat, blah blah blah. I don’t care though. I’m certainly not going back there as long as “Il Douchebags” are going to pop out of the top corner of my screen at me.

n.b. to the Courant, here’s how you pull off a news webpage that people might actually consider visiting more than once:

Even though my screenshot was flippant, you’re welcome to try and calculate the content-to-ads ratio on the above the fold home page of both of those sites and compare them. Only to make the contest fair, when you’re doing your calculations for the Courant’s site, you have to have a video of a Clown selling mail-order herbal viagra surreptitiously start on your screen. Otherwise you haven’t gotten the full effect of reading Courant.com.

In Collage, Tapulous hit upon a pretty awesome concept:  take advantage of location services and the iphone camera, and create a dynamic photostream app so you can see the world through the lenses of all the other iphone users around you. There’s only one problem with it that I can see so far:  too many of the iphone users around me are clueless assholes.

What I was expecting from this app was random shots from the lives of random people, woven into a tapestry that in a very Web 2.0 way demonstrates how connected we are.  You know what I’m talking about — the minor details and captured Polaroid-esque moments from our lives.

What I received from this app was:  people clearing out their entire photo roll in one ejaculatory blast, zillions of uninspired, ill-conceived and poorly rendered iPhone wallpapers and screen captures, the occasional porn picture, some guy who uploaded most of his undergrad photo-class flickr set (which admittedly were pretty enjoyable, but…), and what to me was most annoying of all: some shmuck who took a screenshot of a notes page that had nothing but his myspace web address on it, and spammed it about 50 times into the photostream.

So how could Tapulous fix this app?  Here’s one idea:  they could harvest info from every poster’s iphone, and if that person is determined to be an idiot, use that info to dispatch a death squad.  In my opinion, this would be the most elegant solution.  If for some reason option ‘A’ isn’t feasible, the app could use some human moderation prior to photos being posted.  Maybe different ‘channels’ (screenshots vs. non-screenshots, for example) could be employed.  At the very least, the ability to ban individual posters from your photostream should be an option.  Or what if — and this idea would undoubtedly piss off a lot of people — what if you could only post pictures from the camera, and not from your photo roll? hmmm…

At any rate, it’s a great idea, rendered crappy not by its creators, but by its end users.  But it’s also a free app, so by all means, load it onto your iPhone and start posting more of those Tazmanian Devil wallpapers.  I can’t get enough of those.

On the iTunes app store, there are approximately 1.6 BILLION apps designed to help you manage your personal finances.  There are apps that attempt to fully replicate the experience of Quicken on your desktop, apps with no more functionality than a piece of scrap paper tucked into your wallet, and everything in between.  I have tried them all — that’s correct, all 1.6 billion of them.  The best one of the lot is the aptly named ‘Checkbook.’

As the name suggests, Checkbook attempts to provide an electronic replacement for the paper check register that you keep in your checkbook and never bother to keep up to date anyway.  But, in the case of Checkbook, you will keep your transactions register up to date, because the iPhone Checkbook is actually compelling to use, much more so than a paper checkbook, and in my opinion, much more than any of its current competition.

Here’s what it has going for it:

1. A great, intuitive layout/GUI.  This is an app that’s made to be used.  Everything is in its proper place.  You can open up the app as you walk away from the cash register, and have the groceries you just bought entered into your check register before you reach your car.

2. Speedy loading.  A couple of the apps I tried out took a year and a day to load up, with less than 100 transactions logged.  What would they have been like with 1000 or so?  I don’t even want to hazard a guess.

3. A responsive and friendly developer.  The app is being actively developed with an eye to what actual users want and need, and the developer mans his feedback forum diligently — this is an invaluable asset to the app.

4. Doesn’t try to throw in the kitchen sink.  The app performs its duties very well, and doesn’t attempt to be an all-in-one budgeting and money management solution.

What’s lacking:  As of right now, there’s no way to export your data, nor is there a way to purge old data. There’s also no means of setting up recurring transactions. The developer assures that these features are coming soon, though, and I’m inclined to believe him.

Checkbook costs $1.99 (cheap!), and is available on the iTunes store.

For those of you unfamiliar with Hartford: Cinema City is the city’s primary ‘art’ movie theater…the place you have to go to see films that aren’t in wide release. There’s also Cinestudio (Trinity College) and the Criterion in West Hartford, but Cinema City still seems to get the best new indie/artsy-fartsy releases, from what I’ve seen. Cinema City also happens to be located in the absolute ass-end of nowhere. Its closest neighbor is a sewage treatment plant, and the brightest lights in its neighborhood are at the porno superstore up the street. Basically what I’m saying is that if I’m going to Cinema City, it’s for a movie that I really want to see.

I really didn’t think that In Bruges was going to be good enough to warrant the trip out to the Mad Maxville neighborhood of Hartford. First of all, Colin Farrell is a bit of a twat, one of those actors for whom you can name more of the rehab clinics he’s stayed at than movies he’s starred in. And the trailer for the movie looked ok, but more like a Netflix movie than something to see in the theater.

Anyway, I was coerced into going, and I’m very glad I was. This movie is worth all the hype that it’s been getting. One measure of a good movie: you walk out of the theater feeling like you just saw something new, something you haven’t seen several permutations of before. Another measure: you’re still thinking about it more than a day later. In Bruges passed on both counts.

Duma Key (audible.com)
by Stephen King
read by John Slattery

After a life-changing accident, Edgar Freemantle gains a window to the supernatural.

The book:  A fun and scary story told in the King’s classic Master-Storyteller style.  We get glimpses of lots of King trademark themes and styles here, including a few nods to Lovecraft, and my favorite King-ism — the ability to take a perfectly mundane object, situation, or happening, and make it incredibly creepy.  My only complaint was that it felt a bit drawn out and plodding at times.  Understandably, it’s the setting and story that almost demand the book’s pacing, and it wasn’t horribly slow (I never felt like giving up on it), but still, the audiobook felt like it could have been a few hours shorter.  Don’t take that as a non-recommendation, though — this is still a quality King book that won’t disappoint fans of his work (and that includes me).

The narration:  I’ve come to expect nothing but excellent readers in Stephen King’s audiobooks, and John Slattery didn’t disappoint.  He did an excellent job with this book.  One thing that I found interesting:  Having listened to King himself read his On Writing book, Slattery’s voice has a similar quality in cadence and tone, to King’s.  It gave his reading of King’s words a great deal of credibility.

In summary:  it’s a new Stephen King novel…do I need to say more?

American Gods (audible.com)
by Neil Gaiman
read by George Guidall

Upon his release from prison, Shadow finds work driving for a mysterious old man who just may be an old world god walking the earth.

The book:  This came as a total breath of fresh air.  I had heard of the book, but never read any reviews or synopses of it or anything, so I had no idea what to expect.  This iss a genre-defying story, in which Gaiman busts out with a really unique and inspired storyline, which he weaves deftly.  He managed to blindside me with a few plot twists, and it’s been a while since any  sci-fi/fantasy/thriller/horror/whatever book has really done that.  There were a couple of spots where the story went flat and started dragging a bit for me, but they were few and far outweighed by the story as a whole.

The narration: George Guidall is a fairly legendary audiobook reader, and this book could very well have been written with his voice in mind.  His voice is so full of character that it feels just about perfect for the story and most of its characters.  I remember him from his work on the latter books of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, (where he picked up after Frank Muller’s tragic motorcycle accident).  If I was a fan of his then, I’m even more of a fan of his after listening to this excellent book.

Overall, this was one of those audible.com selections that makes you sit back and say ‘damn, I got this for $15?’ Audible is one of the best values on the internet.

Darkly Dreaming Dexter (audible.com)
by Jeff Lindsay
read by Nick Landrum

Dexter Morgan is a Miami P.D. crime lab tech…and serial killer.

First, the book: Excellent. Delightfully sick. I don’t think I can recall another story with an anti-hero who was at once so completely lovable and completely repugnant. Dexter’s inner dialogue largely makes the story. Excellent pacing, very original for a crime/suspense/thriller.

Next, the narrator: Nick Landrum just became one of my favorite audiobook narrators with his work in this book. His voicing of Dexter is spot-on, and he does different voices and a few very competent foreign accents in a believably subtle way, never cheesy. Without a doubt, this is a book where the wrong narrator could have completely ruined the audio version. Whoever selected Landrum for the job absolutely nailed it and should be commended.

Very enjoyable and satisfying. I’ll be picking up the sequels in the months to come.