According to Google, its the 160th Anniversary of the First World's Fair.

I love this really cool illustration on the Google homepage with the gold ornamented magnifying glass and several random fun animations as the magnifying glass hovers over details.







I had to look up what it was all about. According to wikipedia:

The first Expo was held in The Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London, United Kingdom in 1851 under the title "Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations".

And then I realized that the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901 was a World's Fair! Those were the glory days for our city. Look at all the pomp and circumstance...

I was craving pizza yesterday night so I made my own for lunch today. 10X tastier and awesome and I bet, around 14X cheaper.

A cute breakfast for once...



Cals...............251
Fat................12g (39%)
Cholesterol.....205 mg (143%)
Sodium..........532 mg (38%)
Carbs.............21g (15%)
Fiber..............6g (50%)
Protein...........18g (75%)
Sugars...........1g

I was looking at the Best of Buffalo food lists and...

Best Salad
Poppyseed Cafe
Cole’s
Pano’s
Globe Market
Kosta’s

EH??

The only poppyseed cafe I could find online was this and that is in Fircrest, Washington. Is this in one of the burbs or something?

Other thoughts about the list:

Best New Restaurant
The Delaware
Blue Monk
The Eights Bistro
Mezza
Lloyd’s Taco Truck

No Blue Fin? Is it not that new, maybe? I voted for Blue Fin. (e:Paul), Blue Fin doesn't even make the best sushi list. Didn't you vote early and often?!! :-)

Best Dessert
Chocolate Bar
Delish
Dessert Deli
Butterwood
Sweet Tooth

This makes me think the list is rigged. I know for a fact tons of people voted for Chow Chocolat - including me.

Restaurants Buffalo Needs
Authentic/traditional Mexican
Ethiopian
More vegan/vegetarian options
More food trucks
A vegan bakery

I think I agree with this one the most. Well... as in 4/5. I am definitely not agreeing with the idea of a vegan bakery...

Best Thai / Vietnamese
Saigon Cafe
Taste of Thai
Papaya
Pho 99
Jasmine

WHAT? No Blue Fin, in this list as well? Did voting for one place in 4 categories disqualify my vote or something?!

Best Soul Food
Gigi’s
Soul Fabulous
Aunt Mattie’s
Lagniappes
Musician’s Big 6

I haven't been to any of these places except old Lagniappes... Come to think of it, I have no idea what soul food is.

Best Vegetarian
Amy’s
The Eights
Merge
Betty’s
Falafel Bar

Merge is an over-rated disappointment. I can confidently say that people who have been vegetarians for more than a few months and for the right reasons (read: not substituting the hell out of every meal with meat "substitutes" and craving meat all the time) won't like this place. The food is just bland and made without any soul. I am not sure any of the people who actually run the place are real vegetarians - hence the lack of connection and soul.

WHOA. THE EIGHTS BISTRO! How did I miss this restaurant right down the street? Maybe I should go there for dinner tonight after I am done at the office. It's open till 2 AM today apparently.

If not today... SOMEDAY, I really want to try these from their menu:

• Brussels Sprouts w/hot smoked caramelized onions,

gruyere cheese and a touch of mozzarella (white) $13.50

• Mushroom and Caramelized onion served with a rosemary infused honey drizzled over melted blue cheese and mozzarella. topped with roasted walnuts (white) $12.75

(I hope I am not kicked out if I ask them to omit the blue cheese. Blue Cheese = ick)

• Vegan - housemade basil chili tofu cashew cream and marinara sauce. Topped with plenty of broccoli, mushroom, yellow peppers and red onion $14.50

And good riddance, Campieri's. You were a rude, snobby, intolerant, racist and an awful person. I hope you have nothing to do with this new Bistro. If this is just a reincarnation, I don't think I am going anywhere near it.

Best Middle Eastern
Amy’s
Byblos
Mezza
Falafel Bar
Natalie’s

Hmm.... Haven't eaten at 3/5 of those places. I wonder if any of these are in the downtown/Allentown/(E:strip) areas.

Best Indian
Star of India
Taste of India
Kebab and Curry
Tandoori
India Gate

No palace of dosas? Maybe it has really gone down the hill since I last went there.

Okay, this list is tooooo long already. I am out of break-time. Let me wrap this up by saying..

Best dining out
- Everything else

I haven't heard of half the places on there. And places in Amherst and the burbs shouldn't really be nominated for something that is called "Best of Buffalo". It's unfair to the people who have actually set up businesses and cater to people IN the city of Buffalo.

And OH.

Best Pilates / Yoga
Evolation Yoga
East Meets West
Sjakti Yoga
Bikram Yoga
BAC

No Hand to Heart. Clearly, my vote was disregarded. The Artvoice ballot is SO rigged.

---

PS: I really like the fact that the quote box is hidden against the white background. I wish the quote box were transparent in other backgrounds as well (when the theme changes). Nudge Nudge *hint* *hint* (e:paul). :)

So I decided to have my own Natty Party, went and bought a kilo of 85%++ dark chocolate (they have an excellent lindt sale at walgreens), brewed a couple litres of tea and took 11.04 for a test spin.

Very fancy, I admit. But not utilitarian fancy... For example, the menu is a combination of a magnified gnome-do and the linux-mint menu. Everything hovers in 3D glory. But I am not quite sure if I like this sort of menu. Maybe with a few keyboard shortcuts but not on its own...

I can't easily find a way to shuffle things around in the main panel at the top. I also can't figure out how to move that application-dock-panel to the right. I like to have everything on the right. I am not a left-hander and I resent things that force me to clumsily switch to my left hand.


And there is too much Mac-iness that I don't like. All the program-related menus appear in the top panel. I absolutely loathe this behaviour in Mac - one of the many reasons why the Mac interface is not so "intuitive" or appealing to me.


I tried to do some simple image manipulating and resizing. In typical Ubuntu contrariness, everything already installed was definitely not what I wanted/liked. Sometime natty eye-candy is just not enough.

Currently, I am on madbox on my oldest laptop (Ubuntu 10.10 kernel + Openbox +SLiM, WinXP on my daily laptop and a stripped down Ubuntu 10.10 64bit on my analyses laptop. I don't see the nattily-dressed Ubuntu making a grand entry on any one of them for now. Seems to me that most of the nattiness has been adopted at the cost of flexibility.

It's Natty release day.

That's Ubuntu 11.04 with Unity - a new desktop environment with a shady and rocky past fraught with disagreement and warfare between Canonical (the Keepers of Ubuntu) and GNOME - the erstwhile desktop of older *buntu flavours.

Regardless of all this strife-torn history, millions around the planet will be celebrating with Natty parties. Including dear neighbouring cities, Ithaca and Rochester.

However, there is no such Natty install-party in Buffalo. In fact, the Ubuntu mirror at UB has not even updated to 11.04 final-release YET. Charles Profitt , lead contact of the New York State Ubuntu Local Community (LoCo) Team asked me if I would be interested in organizing one.

If only I had the time.

If only...

I don't.

That's not very Natty at all.

I really like Sonora Carruseles, but LOL!

If I were to use just two words to describe my ballet class with Kolleen Fischer today, I would say, simply magical. I seriously felt as if time had stopped and frozen into a spectrum of snowflakes as we danced and dissolved every single muscle into the music.

We started with a brilliant Rudy Apffel piano adaptation of the Pavane originally written by Gabriel Fauré back in 1887.
and continued to many Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn classics.

I don't know how Kolleen picks exactly the right piece for every single exercise... but she does. I think they must have carefully tailored the sound system at the studio to bring out the best in piano music. I also met Joe Cipolla - co-founder of the Configuration School of Ballet.

My back muscles are so sore now but I am far from being tired. I am energized! It seemed odd to me at first that dancing would make my back muscles ache so much but it makes perfect sense now. Ballet is so much about posture. I slump at my desk all day so no wonder my muscles feel like they have met their maker on judgment day!

I feel like I have finally found a dance form that challenges every part of my body and awes me completely at the same time. I don't think I am doing justice describing just how beautiful that hour of ballet was to me. Sometimes words are just not enough...

If you have always been fascinated with ballet and share a passion for classical music, come and dance with me next Monday! You will be completely and utterly sore afterwards but then who isn't after a delightful session of time travel?!

I wonder how this will look like a year from now...

I went to my favourite salsa class after several weeks today and I am so very conflicted about whether I like the nature of the dance. I really like going to the class simply because I love dancing with Sarah and Sean and the music is so very addictive. I am incredibly happy when I am dancing by myself, learning fancy footwork and just picking up new moves.



And that's when all the unhappiness starts. I just can't feel any connections when I am dancing with a partner. In fact, I find myself resenting the fact that all the complicated and intricate moves are done by the lead and my role feels rather passive. In a class situation, everything is rosy because all the steps are worked out for me and I am dancing just as I have been told to. But I am absolutely clueless about how people manage to anticipate moves in the context of social dancing.

I am sure tons of practice has something to do with this, but I don't know if I am up to all the mental stubbing that practice outside class involves. And of course, I just can't get good at following without practice outside class. There doesn't seem to be any light at the end of the salsa tunnel. It seems like I am wandering about lost in that tunnel having endless bad hair days.

I always start off the class feeling euphoric. It's just me and Sarah and Sean dancing in the spring. And then things slowly go downhill once partner-work starts in the intermediate class and hits the absolute nadir at the end of class when I wonder why I put myself through hoops for dancing in some vague future with some vague partner who won't like dancing with me anyway. Why?! And what the hell am I doing in class that is geared mainly towards partner dancing?!

Honestly, I don't know.