Long time readers of this site and other people who know me know that I have a generally well earned reputation for having an overly negative world view. In my defense a lot of the world is really stupid.
A lot that happened in 2024 served to reinforce my default point of view. Our politics again put forth a choice between a geriatric orange asshole convicted of multiple crimes or the last minute replacement for a geriatric placeholder who still mostly represented views and interests that were already stale 30 years ago and mostly targeted at the population of people who thought the geriatric placeholder was a best idea running.
Meanwhile, the biggest idea in the software industry these days is stealing content to “train” a giant statistical language model to give you “answers” that are wrong a good percentage of the time. Everyone appears to be killing themselves to jam these idiot bots into your favorite software systems so that they can do things no one asked for at a level of correctness that no one used to call acceptable. All this instead of spending time making new software that is actually useful for solving actual problems in a deterministic way instead of a probabilistic one. Maybe it’s time for me to get off the train.
But, enough of that. Instead of dwelling on the enraging bullshit I will now endeavour to allow you to spend the rest of your time on this web site in 2024 reading about things I actually liked. That might be harder to do, but it will be more fun in the end. After all, the best way to maintain a more positive disposition is to just say “fuck it” and ignore the dipshits and the assholes. So here we go.
Forno Brenci
Forno Brenci sells baked goods at the Bloomfield farmer’s market in the spring, summer and fall. I somehow spaced out and left them off my recent food list, so I’m fixing that now. His flat breads, focaccia, pizza and sandwiches are great. But his sweet stuff is great too. The gluten free chocolate chip banana bread is standout. And, this year he started selling a thing called a “Ciavattoni” filled with sweet cheese and chocolate that is to die for. It’s also much the same pastry as a thing we in Pittsburgh had only known as a “mele” from the original Piccolo Forno and now Colangelo’s’s Bakery in the strip. Go get it.
New Carnegie Music Hall
They renovated the inside of the Carnegie music hall. The seats are a lot bigger and more comfortable now. This will make the live shows there a lot nicer.
New Asian Food Things
The gradual entanglement of all things Asian food into the fabric of the Pittsburgh food scene continued apace in 2024 and I am here for it. We have a new Asian themed food hall, three or four new spots in Squirrel Hill, a much larger rebuild of the Many More food store in the strip and the continued ascension of Pusadee’s Garden as at least one of the top two or three destination fine dining spots in town. A less visible, but even more pleasing effect of all of this has been the gradual appearance of really high quality East Asian produce at the local farmer’s markets. Scallions that are the right size, multiple varieties of actually baby sized baby bok choy, those great long skinny eggplants. What is not to love.
Eclipse and other Sky Things
The eclipse was great. The auroras were great too.
Live Music
In the past my live music life has consisted mostly of PSO shows, Pittsburgh Chamber music shows and not too much else. In the last few years I’ve added two other regular venues to these: the Jazz shows at City of Asylum, and the various student and faculty concerts at CMU. Having been in the city so long, and having gone to CMU as a student it’s a bit embarrassing to say that I never went to the shows at the music school there until recently. But there you are. I’d say that if you want a low risk high reward way to get into the Classical Music world they are the biggest bargain going. And, the range of repertoire that they play is a lot wider than most of the other places in town. So that’s a bonus too.
Fat Butcher
Fat Butcher is a new (since last year) butcher, packaged meat, and prepared food store in upper Lawrenceville. While it has a bit of an extra-bougie hipster vibe two things are undeniable:
The meat is great. All of it.
They have the best smash burger in town.
So drop by.
The Best Potato Chips I Ever Had
This summer we took our first trip to Montreal. There was a spot near our hotel called Baguette/Brochette that served various kinds of grilled meat/veggie sandwiches and bowls and stuff. So of course we dropped by for a snack. As I was finishing my order I spied some freshly made potato chips near the register at which I was paying. So of course I added them to the order. And the nice lady gave me a bag to munch on while we waited for the meat salad to be prepared. Here is what they looked like:
These were the best chips I have ever had. Then later when I went back to pick up our order, the nice lady put another batch in the bag holding our meat salad. Bonus.
Wagnerism
Wagnerism is Alex Ross’s ultra long-form mediation on the artistic influence of Richard Wagner from the 19th century until the late 20th century. This year, after nearly four years of mostly using the audio version of this book to fall asleep again if I woke up at 4am (shame!), I finally managed to actually read and listen to all of it.
This motivated me to try and listen to the rest of the operas that are not the Ring (mostly successful) and also to pick up and try to read Ulysses (we’ll see).
I haven’t figured out how I feel about the book yet.
Smaller Cameras
After hauling the relatively small Olympus micro-4/3rds cameras on another trip (Montreal) and not really using them much I decided to try and pick up a non-phone camera that is even smaller.
As much as it pains me to admit this, there is really only one choice in this space: the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 VII.
The Sony camera catalog is made up of literally dozens of different products all of which are the same, but have slightly different names. Their smaller point-and-shoot type machines are no different. This particular one is the 7th iteration of the smallest thing they make, but confusingly you can still buy at least two or three of the other ones.
Anyway. The camera is great. It’s small, its focus system is more advanced and better performing than any Olympus body, and these days the thumbnail sized sensor is usually not much of a handicap. The files are probably as good as the older DSLR and mirrorless files that I have been perfectly happy with for the last decade.
Maybe I’ll look into Sony’s “real” mirrorless cameras now… once I can figure out the difference between an A1, A9, A7, A7s, A7r, A7c, A7cr, A7III, A7IV, A7DX, or the A7LXIV … I made couple of those up. But only a couple.
Physical Media (and Downloads)
Apparently this was the year everyone figured out that Spotify is bad. I’m all for this. CDs are terrible too, but at least you can convert them into files that you can carry around with you that don’t randomly disappear due to some legal whim. And, they actually pay somewhat real royalties to actual performers rather than just stock options to “rights holders”.
I also bought a lot of downloads, because they also avoid weird legal whims disappearing music out of the streaming service.
I also bought a few Blu-Rays that I’ll never play.
OK I’m done. See you next year.