Category Archives: Photography

Musso & Frank’s grill

Dining, Photographs

A Hollywood institution.



The bar scene.

The bar scene here may not be quite up to Manet’s A bar at the Folies Bergère, but the atmosphere was positively electric when we dropped by this fabled eating spot for dinner. After stumbling along Hollywood Boulevard, that is, trying not to breathe what passes for air in that neighborhood.

Despite its 103 year old provenance and great fame, the food and service were excellent and we lucked out with a small banquette seat isolated from the non-mask wearing set. This being a Thursday I naturally chose the famous homemade chicken pot pie while Winston enjoyed a lovely trout.

If you want to see the glitterati and enjoy a good meal in Hollywood, Musso’s is it.

iPhone 12 Pro Max snap, some taming of the highlights in Photoshop.

Poaching eggs

Cooking

Poached perfection.

This is one of an occasional series on cooking devices which make a difference. For an index of cooking articles on this blog click here.

I confess that this is a technique which it has taken me a couple of decades to master and the length of time is a direct function of my general resistance to kitchen gadgets. I greatly enjoy the physical aspects of cooking and prefer to use traditional hand tools – cleavers, knives, pounders and so on – tending to look askance at gadgets.

Now my many years of poaching failure have seen attempts at various techniques. I have done the swirling vortex hot water with vinegar bit. Abject failure. Wisps of ugly egg white everywhere with the egg, as often as not, looking like the victim of alopecia. Then I chanced on Nigella Lawson’s BBC cooking series. Well, actually, I chanced on staring at Nigella – which is why guys watch her show – so my attention to her detailed instructions may have been less than perfect, but she advocated draining the cracked egg in a small sieve, spraying lemon juice on it and then placing it gently, via a ramekin, in hot water, no vortex in sight. The result was much the same as the vortex method. The water clouds up, whites migrate to the surface and you cannot see what the heck is going on.

So I put the whole thing aside and decided that poaching was not going to be a winner for me.

However, I’m anything but a quitter, and recently came across this device:



The four egg poacher.

Click the link for Amazon which will happily take some $33 of your money.

And disregard the one star reviews which say you will cut yourself on the edges of the stamped insert (you will not) or that the screws come out (they do not). These are likely posted by crooked competitors seeking a sales boost, and there are many devices like this at various prices and capacity (2, 4 or 6 eggs) to be had. This one is spendy but I have found it to be beautifully made, with the eggs being perfection itself. And you can always see the state of your eggs through the glass cover. I used two cups of water and you use the same amount whether poaching 1, 2, 3 or 4 eggs.

I swiped a generous layer of butter on the inside surfaces of the removable Teflon cups. Do not use olive oil. The eggs will stick after a couple of uses.

Once the water was simmering I gave the eggs 3 minutes. I found no need for the provided spatula to remove the finished egg. Grab the cup using the provided spigot, give it a shake and out she comes. Three minutes made an egg that was was nice and runny, and if you like your poached yolks hard then I grieve for you.

Here is the whole Eggs Benedict routine with Canadian bacon and Hollandaise sauce. I warm up the bacon for 30 second on high in the microwave. This has it adopt a shallow cupped shape which neatly holds the poached egg atop the English muffin::



Breakfast.

I use Knorr packets of Hollandaise to cut down on the cholesterol. Half a packet (12g) with a half cup of milk and a little butter is enough for four eggs.

A great device, recommended heartily.

And if you want the perfect egg in a shell, be sure to read this.

Site search has been fixed

Photography

Finally!

Google Search for this site has not been working when activated from the ‘Search’ box at the bottom of this page.

I have replaced it with a new search tool named Relevanssi. Scroll to the bottom of this page, enter a search term and you should see results with the first 60 words included, thus:


Search results for ‘Nikon D3x’.

Label drinkers revisited

Photography

Nothing changes.

I wrote about Label Drinkers some 16 years ago.

It’s sort of comforting to report that little has changed, and those purported experts have only grown in number since then.

An amusing article in the Washington Post reminded me of my old column.

It seems that a fraudster selling vinyl records under the MoFi label has been cleaning up selling ‘pure analog’ records for egregious sums when, in fact, the source material for these pressings is digital. Encomiums to this fraudster who lit on some of the most prolific and spendthrift Label Drinkers on the planet.


MoFi fraudster at work.

‘Audiophiles’, you should understand, think nothing of spending fortunes on analog gear – turntables, cartridges, etc. – and will listen to nothing but scratchy old vinyl disks, thewhile preaching to all and sundry that only analog can deliver pure sound. This, of course, is utter rot and not a single blind listening test has them identify good digital from best analog at a statistically meaningful rate. Go ahead, Google away. Not a single set of data exist which indicates they can actually tell the difference unless, that is, their precious vinyl is scratched in which case even I would ace the test.

Now before I point you to the wonderfully funny newspaper hit piece, let me illustrate for you the idiocy of these fools, who truly prove that there is one born every minute. Here are two examples of Audiophile Label Drinkers’ essentials – the ubiquitous turntable and cartridge:


$200k plus and still no sound.

And here’s the article. Enjoy:

And just as a reminder, the camera in your iPhone puts the one in the $10,000 Leica M11 to shame. The $100,000 Tesla is pure garbage, with the worst build quality and reliability of any vehicle. And only a fool buys a Patek Philippe (I sold mine – gulp!) – unreliable garbage with the worst customer repair service imaginable.

Sofabaton U1 universal remote

Ramblings

A smart universal remote.

I explained how to add surround sound to a two channel sound system here. The only snag I have encountered is that the small Fosi two channel amplifier I procured to drive the rear surround sound speakers failed after a few months of service. The maker – Fosi Audio – proved to be a thief, refusing to honor the warranty. So be warned – do not buy the Fosi brand unless you want to be ripped off.

Anyway, there I was, feeling sorry for myself, when it struck me I had an old Sony two channel receiver hidden away in the garage in the corner that the black beetles call home. I whipped it out, plugged the rear speakers in and voila, rear channel sound was restored. After a bit of digging I determined that this old Sony could be used with an IR remote and it was the work of moments to find one on eBay. $12 later it was mine. And it’s nice having a remote for the rear speakers because you really want to set the volume on these from your usual listening position, as engineers are wildly inconsistent on the relative volume accorded the rear channel.

But the snag is that I was now in Remote Chaos.


A gaggle of remotes.

Reading from left to right, these control the top notch Parasound two channel front amplifier, the LG 4K OLED TV, that old Sony receiver resurrected from the garage, the Roku Express 4K streaming puck and the Mac Pro mouse, where all our movies are stored. The ridiculous thing is that no one remote permits the functions of another to be added, and despite the plethora of buttons – I count 117 plus the mouse – only one or two buttons on any one remote are ever used.

So it was time to think about adding a universal remote, though memories of earlier efforts with past devices, ones from RCA and Logitech, recalled only bad experiences.

Enter the quirkily named Sofabaton U1 universal remote.


The Sofabaton U1 with a cell phone. The scroll wheel is circled.
Click the image to go to Amazon.

Priced at an attractive $50 the device uses two (included) AA batteries and any Android or iOS cellphone or tablet to program. First, you download the Sofabaton app from the AppStore. There’s a substantial database of saved devices, accessed when you enter the manufacturer and device names (sadly there’s no scrollable list) and, if your devices are there, adding them to the Sofabaton, which can accommodate up to 15, is simplicity itself.

If your device is not in the database, you can use an existing remote to program it, and such was the need for the relatively obscure Parasound amplifier remote where the only buttons I programmed were power, volume, mute and two input options. You place the Sofabaton opposite and 3″ from your existing remote, choose the button to program on your iOS or Android device, and hold the corresponding button on the remote until the app tells you the button is programmed. No problemo.

All the other remotes were in the Sofabaton database.

The Sofabaton is an IR/line of sight device, and mercifully that old Sony rear channel amp, nestled on a shelf behind one of the Martin Logan electrostatic speakers, can be seen through the transparent speaker!


Transparent speakers rule.

The universal remote can also control one Bluetooth device, not a requirement in my case. If your devices use RF then you need the Sofabaton X1 universal remote, costlier, but a handy solution.

Cross-assigning keys: This is not in the instructions. Say you have programmed the TV scroll wheel setting on the Sofabaton using the stock codes in the database. Your volume keys, as an example, will control the TV speakers’ volume. But that is not what is wanted as an external amplifier is used with external speakers. Sure, you can switch the scroll wheel to the Amplifier setting and change the volume there, but it would be far better to have the TV scroll wheel setting volume buttons operate the amplifier and not the internal TV volume adjuster. You can do this. Go to the TV setup on your cell phone and choose the Up Volume key on the display. Then touch ‘Learn from Original Remote’ but when it comes to pointing a remote at the Sofabaton use the remote for your amplifier, not the one for your TV. I have done this in the TV setting for Volume Up, Volume Down and Mute. Now, without changing devices with the scroll wheel, I can change the volume setting on the external amplifier while remaining in the TV scroll wheel setting.

Note that ‘learning mode’, where an original remote is used to ‘teach’ the SofaBaton IR codes, is not perfect. Sometimes you need two or three goes to get the code to take, something which is clearly indicated on the cell phone’s display. In some cases I had to vigorously pump the button on the original remote before the SofaBaton played ball. But with a little persistence all was well.

Here’s an illustration of how this is done. I first programmed the Roku Express 4K keys using the stock data in the Sofabaton database. I then used the indicated remotes to override programming of selected keys with the happy result that all functions for the Roku are accessible without any scroll wheel selection – front and rear speaker volumes and muting, TV sources and sound sources:


Cross-assigned remote buttons.
This takes far longer to illustrate than to do.

Here is the programming screen on an iPhone for the above settings:


Green designates the stock database download for the Roku Express 4K.
Blue shows keys overriden with separate device remotes.
Orange is a Macro key to invoke the TV source display.

Snags? The battery cover is hellish to remove – I used a nickel and still managed to marginally scar the two opening slots. And there’s no way to program the mouse, despite the Bluetooth functionality, as the Sofabaton has no ball wheel.

Macros? These are series of steps – like ‘turn on the TV/turn on the front amplifier/turn on the rear amplifier’ – and are easily programmed with the requisite 0.5 second delay between each so as to allow sluggish devices to keep up. As for IR beam angle, my devices subtend maybe 45 degrees of angle from my seated position and pointing the Sofabaton at the middle of that angle saw no issues with response. In other words, the broadcast IR beam is wide.

The scroll wheel at the top of the device (see the first image, above) display the device chosen on the small LCD screen whose activation is motion sensitive. Pick up the remote and it comes alive. Leave it alone and it turns off after some 20 seconds of inactivity.

Look and feel? Except for the issue with the overtight battery door, feel and finish are excellent. The audible feedback from the keys is welcome, and the matt keys are set off against a very attractive glossy black fascia. It remains to be seen whether this will disclose a lot of scratches, but it looks great. The overall feel is that of a quality tool and the fit in the hand is superior to that of any of the now obsoleted separate remote controls. The English in the minimalist instruction book is truly ghastly, but the programming process with a cell phone is so simple that it does not matter.

And the pleasant result of all this magic?


The remote population now.
The OLED display is illuminated.

Reliability? Unknown as the device is new to me. I fancy the battery door clips will need some work with a fine file to ease removal. The buttons are not backlit but give off a satisfying ‘click’ when used.

The home entertainment center – technology should be enjoyed …. and invisible:


No mess.