Wonderfunk is an interactive blog focusing on dialogs related to gadgets, tech, web 2.0, music, design, art, my life and likes, how-to's, MAKE culture, instructables, and just general cool link aggregation and commentary.

29 April 2007

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Getting on the Technorati Favorites Bandwagon

It's all about the link train, other bloggers give this a try if your just a reader of this blog please click here to add me to your technorati favorites....don't know what that is click anyway and find out.

Here are the rules:

1) Write a short introduction paragraph about what how you found the list and include a link to the blog that referred you to the list.

2) COPY the Rules and ENTIRE List below and post it to your blog. To avoid duplicate content and increase the amount of keywords your site can be accessible for, go ahead and change the titles of the blog. Just don’t change the links of the blog.

3) Take “My New Faves” and move them into the “The Original Faves” list.

4) Add 3 Blogs that you’ve just added to your Technorati Favorites to the “My New Faves” section. Remember to also add the “Fave Me” link next to your new blogs (i.e. http://technorati.com/faves?sub=addfavbtn&add=http://www.yourfavesdomain.com)

5) Add Everyone on this list to your Technorati Favorites List by clicking on “Fave the Site.” Those who want good kharma will fave you back. If not, you will for sure get the benefits of faves from the bloggers who continue this list after you.

My New Faves

mind for design - fave the site
in one ear and... - fave the site
diy happy - fave the site

The Original Faves
Bobs [ReformatThis] - Fave the Site
Everyday Weekender - Fave the Site
Armen’s Blog - Fave the Site
Gary Lee
- Fave the Site
Dosh Dosh - Fave the Site
Nate Whitehill
- Fave the Site
Ms. Danielle - Fave the Site
Jeff Kee - Fave the Site
Scribble on the Wall - Fave the Site
Jimi Morrisons Head - Fave the Site
Jon Lee - Fave the Site
Samanathon - Fave the Site
Eat Drink & Be Merry - Fave the Site
The Man of Silver
- Fave the Site
Hannes Johnson - Fave the Site
My Dandelion Patch
- Fave the Site
Nathan Drach - Fave the Site
SiteLogic - Fave the Site
Julies Journal - Fave the Site
Stephen Fung - Fave the Site
Ed Lau - Fave the Site
QMusings - Fave the Site

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Restaurant Review: Auberge du Soleil, Rutherford, CA

Auberge du Soleil
Rutherford, CA

Christine and I decided to try this place to celebrate our 5th anniversary. The place has a reputation for great service and good food with excellent presentation. I'll review the meal itself in a second, but let me get somethings out first.....location was incredible as you can tell from the picture its beautiful, what you can't tell is that you are looking out over the entire Napa Valley and it is fantastic. complimentary valet service was nice. We were seated in a table overlooking the valley and really got to enjoy the view. On to service, we had this french waitress who wouldn't smile, clearly not having a good day. The sommelier was a guy named Chris, he was quite informative. I must admit we probably had 12-15 different people provide us service over the course of the meal, so they are definitely attentive. There must have been problems in the kitchen the night we were there, because the cadence of the meal was totally off....we ended up waiting between courses for an eternity. We decided to go with the 4 course fixed price. Here goes: the food was 'OK', price was ridiculously high, we probably would only return for sunset drinks...for the same price we could have ate at French Laundry or Le Bec Fin, and I can't even put this place in that league. The chef started us with an amuse buche then quickly into our first course I had Hamachi Sashimi on Lemon Gelee with Cucumber Jus, Christine had an Asparagus Soup with Lemon Creme next I had Tai Snapper with pork belly and Christine had Halibut which was excellent. For the main I had bacon wrapped veal tenderloin and Christine had Liberty Farm Duck...we both preferred the second to the main. For dessert I went with the sorbet which was refreshing and Christine had the phyllo wrapped chocolate dumplings which she loved. Overall if the meal came out in a timely fashion and a we had a lead server that was having a better day we would have rated this one higher.

Our rating:
Expected so much more: 2.5 stars out of 5

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28 April 2007

Winery Review: Rubicon Estate - Rutherford, CA

Rubicon Estate, formerly Niebaum-Coppola, formerly Ingelnook. This place was spectacular, forget the fact that Christine and I are both pretty big Francis Ford Coppola fans, the wine tasting here was great. It starts with everything being totally VIP. You pull up and a valet takes your car and leaves you on a red carpet, you proceed to the estate and into the tasting room which was very cool. There are 5 wines in the tasting and 4 of the 5 we would have bought....we decided to buy their signature wine (a pretty penny) and bottle age it until our tenth anniversary. I'm already looking forward to that day! Definitely check this place out if you get the chance....worth every penny.

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Winery Review: Robert Mondavi - Oakville, CA

Robert Mondavi Winery was beautiful. The tour was quite educational, friendly to beginners, and quite eye opening. The tour ends with a seated tasting. Christine and I both enjoyed it, learned a lot, and left pleased with the tasting.

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Restaurant Review: Celadon Napa, CA

Celadon
Napa, CA

To start off I had flash fried calamari with a spicy chipotle chili glaze and pickled ginger, at first I thought this was going to be like a very typical calamari dish and was going to leave me craving for a good traditional red sauce, but I was wrong....the chipotle glaze which was a little oily was out of this world....the pickled ginger was a perfect complement...this was a great start. Christine had the endive and pear salad with blue cheese, candied walnuts and honey mustard vinaigrette and she thought the combination was well suited and liked it. For the main I had the roasted duck breast with wild mushroom risotto and black truffle jus, the duck was slightly overcooked but all in all I was quite pleased, great flavor pairings...Christine had the mongolian style barbecued chicken breast with basmati rice and grilled pineapple salsa and thought it was a great way to do chicken....not typical and great flavor. Service was decent, we had a bit of an annoying waitress...the drinks were great however. All in all the restaurant was great and we would definitely go back....sit outside if you can.

Our rating:
Great, would definitely return
: 3.75 stars out of 5

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26 April 2007

Sweet....a place to go when this one is ruined...and only 20 years away at light speed

Scientists have discovered a new planet in the constellation Libra. The small, rocky planet is special because it appears to have mild temperatures, like Earth. Researchers believe it looks like the first planet outside of our solar system that could be home to liquid water, and maybe even life.

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23 April 2007

First Fork Art now Carved Crayons

A while back I reviewed some Fork Art.
Here is something along the same lines, Carved Crayons from Pete Goldlust take the everyday and making it much much cooler.

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17 April 2007

last.fm

While I remain a Pandora fan, I have found some really cool music using last.fm lately. They also have a player widget for Netvibes, which if you read this blog you should know that is a definite benefit. It has found not only cool unknown artists for me, but even better totally unknown tracks from artists I love....example right now it is playing the perfectly overlooked track 'Sex Machine' (no not from JB) off of the Sly and The Family Stone's Stand album.

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01 April 2007

Farecast, Remember The Milk, bubbl.us, Rollyo, and more...

Travel:
Ok just booked some travel, for a wedding anniversary trip to Napa Valley, I've talked about farecast before and I just used it to time the absolute best price on this trip, not only are they spot on with the fare indicators, but the interface is fantastic....every airline and reservation service should model this UI, needs a small tweak here and there, but all in all top notch.

To Do Management:
I've also been using Remember The Milk religiously. This is far and away the best to do list manager, again great UI, keyboard shortcuts, shareable, rss-feed, great Netvibes widget.

Mind Mapping:
A few years back I used Mind Manager to facilitate some brainstorming sessions and it worked pretty well, more recently I had the need to do something similar and leveraged free mind (an open source mind mapper). I just got turned on to Bubbl.Us I guess it was only a matter of time before this space became web 2.0 savvy. I love it.

Search:
Rollyo is a Roll your Own search engine that federates across sites of your choice, with a web 2.0 social network built in. I have basically been using a shared Guitar Tab search engine, which is awesome, and a Mr. Fix-It search engine for a home project I am doing.

Food:
You must check out Wheel of Food, basically enter a zip code and a query (like, Atkins or Asian) and the wheel of food spins.

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