My 2006 Lexus IS250 Sports Luxury

John | June 27, 2010 - 12:42 am

Here’s a photo taken on 3rd August 2006 at my Lexus dealer’s showroom when I took delivery of my IS250 Sports Luxury with more amazing features than I could poke a stick at (as the saying goes).  And as it turned out, than I could use.  However in 2006, it was the only IS250 model that had the features I really wanted.  (That’s not the case in 2010.)

I was thrilled with the car, but also very nervous about driving it. Here’s a photo of the interior – which is the same as the car I took for a test drive. I’ve really liked the interior colours in the 4 years since I took delivery of the car.

I hope you can see why I liked it so much.

I’ll finish off with a photo of the driver’s door.

I’ve never been good at reverse parking, and sadly, over the past 4 years, the alloy wheels on the passenger side (the side next to the kerb) have suffered some scrapes which happened while I was trying to get used to the rear camera parking guides.  The dashboard has had an infrequent rattle over the past two years which I didn’t report until my last service, 10 days ago.  It will take two days to fix, as the dashboard has to be removed to fit new clips.

The 4 year warranty will expire next month, as will the Lexus Encore Privileges.

Time to upgrade?

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New iPhone Apps

John | June 7, 2010 - 11:47 pm

Today is a great day to write about some iPhone apps, because Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, announced the iPhone 4 today.  It’s a sensational update, and the good news is that the new iOS 4 software will be a free update for 3G and 3GS iPhones.

It might seem a little odd, or at least conflicting, that I’m writing about the new iPhone apps I bought last Saturday night, on my blog pages, when I have a page dedicated to iPhone apps on my home website.  The difference is that in my blog posts I mostly write about current or recent happenings and thoughts, such as the purchase of two new iPhone apps a few days ago.  By contrast, in the iPhone Apps page on my home website, I’ve mostly written about apps after I’ve used them for many months and find them invaluable, or especially interesting (such as the Remote control for iTunes on the computer).

The thumbnail image for this post is a scan of the front cover of the Mark Bittman book “How to Cook Everything” which I’ve had since it was first published in 1998.  It’s a big book – 944 pages.

Mark Bittman is a columnist for The New York Times who writes under the heading of “The Minimalist.”  You can read about him on his blog at http://markbittman.com.

In the past year or so when I’ve seen his book on the shelves at Borders and other bookshops I’d noticed that the cover was now red instead of yellow, but I didn’t pay any attention to it.

Well, not until last Saturday night, when I discovered that the Mark Bittman book is available as an app on the iPhone.

It’s not the yellow cover book that I bought in 1998.  It’s the 2008 completely revised 10th Anniversary 2nd edition, with a red cover – and 1056 pages.  There are whole chapters of the 1998 book that are not in the 2008 book – such as the chapter about Beverages and other drinks.

You can read more about Mark Bittman at the New York Times website at

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/mark_bittman/index.html

* trying recipes

* app features such as search, filters and shopping list

The iPhone app is great and a delight to use, and it has features that the books can’t have, such as searches with filtering, and a built-in timer in the recipes.  When the recipe calls for you to heat the frypan for one minute, you click on the time in the recipe,  and up comes a timer set for 1 minute.  The timer alarm sound is worth the price of admission.  A very useful feature is that if you’d like to cook a recipe that sounds tempting, you can click on an icon to add its ingredients to a shopping list.

So far I’ve tried three recipes.  One was for fried eggs, which I’ve been cooking for 45 years, but Mark Bittman’s way of doing it was different to the way I’ve always fried eggs in the past.  It’s such a simple dish, and I’ve always loved bacon and eggs for breakfast since I was a child (when Mum did the cooking).  But in my retirement I’ve only cooked bacon and eggs a few times a year because it has always given me indigestion for a few hours and has tended to ruin my day.  I always vow never to have it again for breakfast, but months later I forget the discomfort and try it again.  Perhaps it’s the way I’ve fried the eggs, so I’ll try it again one day using the Mark Bittman method, as the result of my first trial was very pleasing and tasty.

The second iPhone app I bought last Saturday was Things.  It’s a task manager with a difference.  It’s also a project manager, in which your tasks can be broken down into all the steps needed to implement the project.  Things is the iPhone app of the week on the iTunes App Store this week.  However, it’s the type of app where I wouldn’t post a review until I’ve been using it for many months to see if I’ve found it genuinely useful – or whether I don’t bother looking at it and have, in effect, I’ve stopped using it.  For example, MS Outlook has a To Do list section which I entered all my task into last year – and this week was the first time this year that I looked at it.

Tonight I used my Kuhn Rikon  frypan pressure cooker to cook rice in 4 minutes, and then use it to cook stir fry beef and vegetables.  It’s so convenient and time saving.  It reminds me that one day I must write a blog post about pressure cooking.  Perhaps I should make a note about it in Things.  Smile

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Learning Italian 7

John | March 23, 2010 - 6:48 pm

On Sunday afternoon I followed up one the suggestions in my books, which Ralph also gave a week or two ago, and I looked at an Italian newspaper online.  I did a Google search to find Italian newspapers and chose Corriere Della Sera.it online.

It wasn’t very interesting so I decided to have a look at the motoring section.  I was instantly fascinated by the content.

MILANO – L’annuncio è allettante: vendesi Jaguar Daimler Majestic V8 praticamente nuova (22.500 chilometri accertati), unico proprietario, condizioni perfette (a parte qualche pelo di corgi sui tappetini posteriori), color verde patriottico e full optional (compreso bracciolo personalizzato per la borsetta, console speciale per il controllo dei fanali, luce di emergenza blu e linea telefonica diretta con Downing Street e Ministero degli Interni, oggi non più funzionante). Certo, il prezzo di listino non è proprio abbordabilissimo: quasi 73mila euro. Ma, del resto, la macchina in questione non è una semplice berlina extralusso, bensì l’auto privata della Regina Elisabetta, usata dalla sovrana fra il 2001 e il 2004 più che altro nei dintorni del castello di Windsor e per fare la spola con Buckingham Palace. Da qui, i pochissimi chilometri percorsi e le condizioni immacolate, peli di cane a parte.

I’m sure you can work out what much of this means yourself.  One of the delights of Italian is that so many words are so close to our own.  The Italian news report lead me to the following:

and the video.  Note the selector for 360p, 480p and 720p (HD).

If you want to read more, or place a bid, go to hmthequeensdaimler.com

Sometimes, of course, the Queen travels by horse and cart (so to speak):

As usual with embedded YouTube videos, if you click on the video you can see it full size on the YouTube site.

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Learning Italian 6

John | March 22, 2010 - 1:01 am

It’s only last Thursday that I drove to Chadstone shopping centre – the biggest in the Southern hemisphere – to buy the Italian for Dummies Audio Set. It’s an audio course with 3 CDs and a small 96 page book that you can follow along with the CDs to see in print the words you are hearing, and repeating.  I’ve used the CD case as the thumbnail for this post.

I’ve seen this audio set at Borders for the past two months but have resisted buying it.  I finally decided that it would be helpful.  I half expected that the CD set I’ve seen at Borders for two months, would’ve been sold since my last visit.  But instead, the set was almost everywhere I looked.  Borders had a Dummies promotion going on.

What surprised me was that Italian for Dummies (a normal size Dummies book) was in stock for the first time this year.  I pounced on it.  It comes with one audio CD.

I’ve only been studying the book for three days, and only in small doses, but I’m very impressed with it’s totally different way of explaining pronunciation.

This has led me to a better and more confident way of pronouncing Italian words.

To follow up on my last post, a typical problem I’ve had is how to pronounce the word “giorno.”

The Complete Idiot’s book says that all vowels in Italian are pronounced, but are slid together in the case of dipthongs (two vowels slid together to form one sound. So technically, giorno is pronounced jee-ohr-noh.  But the jee-ohr part should slide together quickly to form johr.  Hence,  johr-noh with a rolled r.

The Dummies book explains this in a totally different way.  It states that an e or i after a g indicates the g should be pronounced the same as j in jam, instead of  the usual g as in get.  Where the Dummies book differs is that it says that to obtain the “j” sound before a,o or u you have to insert an i.  But it then goes on to say, and this is the big difference, that the i serves only to indicate the proper sound of the g, and you do not pronounce it.  Hence giorno is pronounceed johr-noh (and not jee-ohr-noh).

So in words with “ge” or “gi” the g is pronounced with the “j” sound.  To get the “g” sound (as in get) when the g is before an e or i, you insert an h.  And of course h is not pronounced in Italian.  And so we have “spaghetti.”

It’s interesting, but this totally different way of explaining the pronunciation has made it a lot clearer for me.  Instead of trying to remember lots of rules, I’ve now got a different way of looking at it and understanding it.

However, I’m still having trouble with the pronunciation of o.  The Dummies book says it’s o as in piano (which they write as oh as a guide) and leaves it at that.  An example – espresso.   But I know from listening to Italian there are two ways of pronouncing the vowel, often in the same word.  An example – giorno!

You might by now be thinking that I’ve been learning Italian for almost three months and still haven’t got past buon giorno.  That’s quite true.  But it’s just an example of the some of the confusion in my mind from the different books and sources I’ve been using.  I’d like to get it sorted out in my mind.  At this stage I’m interested to learn whether the books are either wrong in places, or different people have different ways of hearing sounds,or whether the books are dumbing it down for beginners, or even just to make it easier for the authors.

The reality is that I can say buon giorno (as no doubt can you) well enough to be understood by any Italian.  But I’ve noticed the differences between books and travel guides, and I’ve perhaps become more interested in the linguistics side of it than in actually learning Italian itself.

As an example, how would you set out how to pronounce the word “question.”

In fact, ask yourself how you pronounce it.  kwes-tee-on?  kwest-chee-on?  kwest-chon?  kwest-shun? or some other way.

I’ve looked it up in the OED and it says kwestjun.  Well sort of. The u is shown in the OED as an upside and back to front e.  That symbol sounds like a in another.

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Learning the Italian Language

John | March 12, 2010 - 1:24 am

For many years, perhaps the last ten, near the end of each year I’ve bought “The Joy of Cooking” desk calendar for the following year.  A cooking or food  tip every day; and the back of the calendar pages, when torn off, were handy for shopping lists, reminders and various notes.  I’ve even used the back of pages in lieu of  With Compliments slips when returning documents and so on.

But last year “The Joy of Cooking Tips” were finally wearing thin after all those years and I was getting no Joy when I tore off the previous day’s message every morning to read the message for the current day.  Besides, I checked out all the usual shops that have stocked it in the past, and none of them had it in stock.

So I decided it was time for a calendar change.  I considered many options over the final weeks of 2009, including the New Yorker Cartoons.  But in the end, on the last day of 2009, I bought the calendar below, that had a strong appeal to me.

I half-heartedly tried to learn Italian many years ago, before I retired, with such little success that I didn’t learn one new word (we all know some Italian words).

So I thought it would be very interesting to get a desk calendar that would present me with a new Italian word every day, and I would see how much Italian I could pick up by the end of 2010.

I want to make it very clear that despite the title of this post, and that I’ve told some friends that I’m trying to learn Italian this year, that is very definitely not the case.

My sole aim, on 31 December 2009, was to see how much Italian I could pick up in 2010 from the desk calendar, and perhaps from other sources.

I had and still have no intention of trying to learn Italian. I do not expect that I will ever be able to have a conversation in Italian or with an Italian.

I just enjoy the learning process, and am taking it very seriously. But the problem is that a lot of what I’ve read doesn’t add up. I’ve found it very confusing and at times I’ve felt like giving up. But in the past two days I’ve begun to realise that some of the guides are aimed at teaching or explaining enough for a tourist to get by, and are not aimed for students of Italian.

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My New Interest – Eat Real Food

John | February 15, 2010 - 11:39 pm

A few weeks ago when the Apple iPad was announced, a friend of mine showed some interest in it as a way of buying and reading books.  She’s an avid reader of books, and I got the impression that her main interest was that electronic books don’t take up any space in your home or add to the clutter.  They’re also cheaper and more eco-green-friendly.

I’ve been reading books on my iPhone since I bought it in November 2008.  In fact, in the past year, it’s the first time I’ve read any novels since my teens, at home in Mt Gambier, before television.  There is one exception, The Da Vinci Code, which I read when it was the book of the day.  I also read two small novels (for ladies) written by a lady friend of a friend of mine.

The iPhone has opened up my reading because I’m retired and like to have a variety of ways to fill in my day, apart from things I have to do because I don’t have a wife.  The iPhone app written up on my website provides a selection of 200 classic books that now sell for A$2.49 for the entire collection.  When I bought it, I paid A$12.99 for only 50 books. But at least I haven’t been charged for the updates that have brought it to 200 books.

I also think that my new interest in reading novels is also partly due to the fact that my home in Melbourne does not have lighting that suits reading for pleasure – but reading on the iPhone has it’s own lighting, and you can set everything to make it easy to read.

Anyway my friend’s interest in the iPad for reading books lead me to discover Kindle for the iPhone, and I couldn’t resist giving it a try.  The Kindle app is free, and it makes it easy to buy modern books that are not in the public domain, which you can buy and download from Amazon.  I bought two books, and the one I’m going to write about is “In Defense of Food” by Michael Pollan (a journalist).

I’m not going to review the book, or even tell you what it’s about.  You can find all this out for yourself by looking up the book on Amazon.com and read some of the pages, and readers’ reviews.

What I am going to tell you is that reading the book has had an impact on me.  The Publishers Weekly describes the book as a “treatise” on the industrialised Western diet and its detrimental effects on our health and eating culture.  It is  particularly aimed at the American food industry, nutritionists and the processed foods that many American apparently eat; but much of it applies to Australia and the food we eat.

You only have to look around our supermarkets and perhaps in your own pantry and fridge to see many examples of processed food.  Did your bread come already sliced and packed?  It only takes flour, water, yeast and salt to make a dough from which a loaf of bread is baked.   If your bread came already packed, try counting the number of ingredients in your bread.  How many of them do you would your grandmother’s generation recognise as food?

When reading the book, I wondered if it is a work to be taken seriously, or if it was a journalist’s rant about a subject in which he has no credentials or formal training.  Should I ignore the advice of my doctor to avoid butter and only have skim milk; or go back to eating butter and full cream milk because they contain more nutrition, and butterfat which Pollan says helps the body absorb the nutrients.

Pollan goes into detail about the milling of flour and the industrialisation of bread making in the 1800′s, with the removal of many of the nutrients and vitamins from the flour.  But I did some research and I think he writes about this piece of history with a slant towards the general thrust of the book, rather than as an objective observation.  I understand that the industrial revolution saw a move in the population from rural areas to the cities and jobs in the factories.  This created problems in feeding the city populations, and this lead to innovation, in a time before anyone know of the existence of vitamins and nutrients.  White flour. I suppose, was seen as good flour that didn’t turn rancid.  In his more recent book “Food Rules” Pollan warns against white bread and states “the whiter the bread, the sooner you’ll be dead.”

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