AndrewSwihart.net

Roasted Lamb with Burnt Onions

andrew@andrewswihart.net (Andrew Swihart) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:39:16 PDT

I just made this recipe out of my Indian cookbook, 5 Spices, 50 Dishes. This book has already paid for itself with the delicious food I’m able to make, saving me from buying Indian take-out every night. A couple key additions to my kitchen’s armementarium have given me free reign over all of Indian cuisine: a cheap but effective wurly blade dedicated for spice grinding and a Japanese grater for fresh garlic and ginger. These porcelain fish graters are incredibly cute and work amazingly well.

You can find this whole recipe on Google Books. You make the marinade, which takes 5 to 10 minutes, and marinate the lamb overnight. The next day, while making the “burnt onions”, almonds, and raisins, you let the lamb sit out at room temperature for an hour before roasting. Then, you just add some final ingredients to the marinated lamb and into the oven it goes.

Two hours later, you have hearty, flavorful lamb that falls apart with the touch of a fork and melts all over your tastebuds. The onions, almonds, and raisins are little flavor bursts that perfectly complement the spicy lamb and sauce. Hotness can of course be adjusted by cutting back on the cayenne or serrano chiles. I paired the dish with some plain basmati rice, and it was probably the best meal I’ve made in my new kitchen so far. Next time, I want to try to make the Chapatis to go with it, I just don’t have a rolling pin as yet.

Coffee Making Gadgets You Need to Own

andrew@andrewswihart.net (Andrew Swihart) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 17:46:40 PDT

There are some things all people need. When it comes to coffee, certain products must be in your possession to avoid failure. You can’t just go to Starbucks everyday and be satisfied with wasting your money on something you could make even better yourself. Yes, often the coffee you make at home is terrible, but there’s hope. With these products you will permanently upgrade your coffee life and transcend into coffee Heaven.

Aeropress

I don’t think anyone would look at this product and think for a split second that it was worth the plastic it is made with. Looks are deceiving, as this little plastic “invention” makes a cup of coffee better than 99% of coffee makers.

The best part is how quick it is: you pour hot water (175°), stir for 10 seconds, and press directly into your favorite mug. In less than a minute, you can hit the road with an excellent cup of coffee. It’s also the perfect coffee maker for travel, very compact and rinsed clean in seconds.

The Aeropress uses the ancient technology of increased pressure to extract flavor out of the coffee quickly. When you press down the plunger, you increase air pressure in the cylinder, driving the brew through the grounds and into your cup. A paper filter is utilized, leaving you with a clean cup, free of sediment. You can get away with a variety of grind consistencies, but for best results, try something just short of espresso.

A major downfall is that you are limited to 8 ounces of coffee per press, and although it is quick to make several batches, it is a hassle that I would never choose to suffer through if I had another option…

French Press

One look at this contraption and, by contrast, you know you are dealing with one elegant and refined piece of coffee equipment. The pressing action here moves a wire mesh filter through the brew, packing the coffee grounds in the bottom of the “pitcher” and allowing a perfect pour into your cup of choice.

Total brew time: 3 to 4 minutes. You MUST use relatively coarse ground coffee, but your coffee should not resemble gravel. Allow boiled water to cool for about 30 seconds, and you should be at around 200° F when you pour it in. A quick stir is in order after pouring and once again a minute or two into the brew. This assures all the water in the pitcher gets a fair chance to turn into coffee. A perfect grind will be fine enough to add a couple pounds of resistance to the press.

French press coffee has an enhanced mouth-feel because the coffee oils don’t get soaked up in a paper filter. The fine grit that remains adds another layer to the coffee’s complexity and character. A French press extracts every bit of taste out of the bean in the most natural way possible; you will never believe it when you taste it for the first time.

Get a nice Bodum 8-cup model to get started some morning in the near future. You’ll be glad you have the extra capacity when brewing for friends, and it handles 8 or 12 ounce solo sessions just as well.

Stove-top Espresso Maker

Popular in other parts of the world, these things have remained inexplicably unknown to most Americans. They make a strong, rich coffee that is similar to espresso. They come in various sizes and styles, and you can find one that fits your unique personality if desired. For an inexpensive, no-nonsense version, just pick up a Bialetti Moka Pot. Be aware, the “cups” they refer to are 2 ounces each. Use this handy table for reference, because it’s hard to multiply by 2 in your head:

Size	Actual Volume
3-cup	6 ounces
6-cup	12 ounces
9-cup	18 ounces
12-cup	24 ounces

Brewing time is under 4 minutes. A fine espresso grind is recommended for most stove-top espresso makers. After a few minutes on medium heat, the coffee slowly spills into the upper reservior, ready for pouring. Moka Pots are well-suited to electric and gas ranges, propane burners, and campfires.

To make espresso like a true barista, all you need is a Bialetti Brikka. The Brikka is a variation of the Moka Pot with an extra pressure valve. The high pressure enhances the flavor extraction process, just like a real espresso machine. Real froth or “crema” is made as the coffee foams out from under the valve into the upper reservoir. The Brikka holds its own with espresso machines costing thousands of dollars.

While it is by no means challenging to use a Brikka, you do have to exert some care with several steps. The grind should be slightly coarser than true espresso, and the grinds should sit light and fluffy in the metal filter. If you pack it or pat it down, water won’t move through too well and you can get “dud” brews. After placing on high heat, you have to stay vigilant waiting for the Brikka to “explode”. At times my Brikka needs a little encouragement in the form of a light tap on the pressure weight, and frothy oozing yumminess ensues.

When frothing turns into sputtering steam, pour immediately into espresso cups to maximize froth preservation. With a maximum 4 ounce brewing capacity, you won’t be sippin’ long with this badboy unless you add a ton of milk. It’s a superior coffee while it lasts, but I prefer the Moka Pot simply because you can make more coffee with it, prolonging your enjoyment.

A Brief Coffee Primer

To assure excellent coffee with any of the coffee making gadgets described in this article, you need to start with fresh, quality coffee. You can use any device you want to brew coffee with old, ground coffee beans, but it will never taste good. What goes in does actually determine what comes out!

Where can you get fresh roasted coffee? Try local coffee shops and online stores that ship only fresh roasted coffee. If you buy at your local grocery store, try to get something you know has a high turnover, with a higher chance of being somewhat fresh. If you at least start with whole beans and grind at home, you are being more savvy than 99% of coffee drinkers who buy pre-ground coffee, and that’s something to be very proud of.

Roasted coffee loses much of its original flavor after just a couple weeks. For this reason, freezing your beans is appropriate unless you are storing for a week or less. It is best to avoid coffee freezing, but a month of freezing is undeniably less harmful to bean integrity than a month of rotting at room temperature.

Flavors begin disintegrating rapidly after coffee is ground, so grinding should be done just before brewing. Nonetheless, if you don’t have a decent burr grinder at home, don’t attempt to grind-on-demand with a crappy grinder. It is better to use a nice commercial grinder where you buy the coffee, dialed in for the type coffee you are making. Freshness will decline exponentially after grinding, but at least the coffee will brew properly. A decent burr grinder at home ensures a consistent grind and lets you preserve the freshness of whole beans. You can spend a lot of money on a nice burr grinder, and I would encourage you to do so.

Conclusion

At this time, it is appropriate to click on the picture of the coffee maker above that most intrigued you, and you will be magically transported to Amazon.com to make a purchase you will never regret. Then, with a bit of rage, go and snatch up your bulky electric drip machine and find some final resting place for it. Just don’t give it to anyone you like.

Key West in HD via Canon HV20

andrew@andrewswihart.net (Andrew Swihart) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 19:35:15 PDT

Key West HV20 from Andrew Swihart on Vimeo

I uploaded my first HV20 video to Vimeo in 720p HD, with footage from my recent trip to Key West. Most of it was filmed aboard the Key West Express cruise boat that I took back and forth from Ft. Myers.

Everything is done handheld with optical image stabilization enabled, in 24p and “Cine” mode. Only a UV filter is attached to the lens. Sound is via the onboard microphone. Video was captured and converted to Cineform Neo HDV format with pulldown removal via HDLink. No color correction or other image editing was done, just splicing of takes in Sony Vegas. The video was exported as MainConcept MP4.

The camera is tiny and very light, so holding it steady can be a challenge, but when I am standing still and just holding it straight on or doing slow zooms, the image stabilization does a good job of smoothing out small movements. Panning must be done slow and steady to look good without a tripod or other mechanical stabilizer. When I’m walking around or fiddling with buttons, the shaking kills the otherwise amazing video quality this camcorder delivers. If you keep it steady, carefully frame your shot, and ensure good focus, a stock HV20 is capable of astonishing quality, almost like a Discovery Channel HDTV broadcast.

You’ll have to go to the Vimeo page to see it in full HD. The most beautiful and sharpest scenes in this video are at the end, at sunset as the boat pulls out of Key West, so watch the whole thing!

Update 3-30-08
Below is my first try at using Amazon S3 to serve up high-definition flash video, rather than using a video hosting service like Vimeo, which downgrades HD videos to SD when embedded on any site other than Vimeo.com. I think it is a noticeable step up in quality. It could be better though, since I actually made this FLV file by converting from the already compressed MP4 file; optimally, I would be able to export directly to FLV from Sony Vegas, but I don’t know of a way to do that yet. For the time being, the optimal solution for quality would be export as uncompressed AVI and then convert that to FLV.

I Had to Get My Cat Castrated

andrew@andrewswihart.net (Andrew Swihart) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 21:30:48 PDT

For many reasons, I had to get my cat castrated, or “neutered,” as they call it. It was required by law since I got him at an animal shelter, it will prevent him from breeding freely with multiple female strays in the neighborhood, and it has other practical benefits for me as well, most importantly he won’t start spraying urine all over the house. I had mixed feelings about it going in, knowing that “neutering” was just PC for “cutting his nuts off”, to put it in terms we all understand.

I named him Trouble for a reason. He is a wonderfully mischievous kitty, and his antics have earned him the name “Chaos” by some of my neighbors. If he wasn’t out causing a ruckus somewhere, I would start to worry that something was wrong. I didn’t want the operation to tame him so much as to just meet the legal requirements, prevent him from impregnating multiple female strays, and keep my furniture urine-free. What I didn’t want was for him to become an androgynous, boring, depressed shell of a cat.

What’s done is done, and he is now essentially the feline counterpart of the 18th century castrati – boys castrated before their voices started to lower to preserve their “angelic” high register for singing. I’ll never get to hear his mature baritone “meow” in all its glory ;). Apparently I’ll also miss getting to see him with face shields, but I don’t think I’ll mind that too much.

I know if I lived on a farm somewhere in the country, I wouldn’t have gotten him neutered. There’s no reason to do something so extreme just to prevent some errant urine. Also, I’ve been pretty successful training him not to do things like scratch my couch using my “water bottle technique”, which involves blasting him with a strong gust of H₂0 when he’s in the middle of an undesirable behavior. I imagine it could work for spraying urine as well. Also, he’s outdoors for 75-90% of the day, so I’m sure he’d do most of his spraying outside.

The procedure itself is quite simple, as shown in a slide show on this page. They anesthetize the cat, make a small incision, cut the testicles off, and tie the cords together. Amazingly, they don’t do anything to close the incision afterwards. The vet tech told me, “they press it together and it sticks.” Yeah right. It looks like an open wound, although it’s not bleeding or inflamed, so he should be OK.

What have I noticed so far? He’s been a bit less vocal, less rambunctious, and less eager to be outside constantly. When he has gone outside he’s returned in just a few hours. This is a change from what he usually does, which is to stay out all day and all night until I go looking for him in a back alley around my house. It has been colder outside so I’ll count that as a confounding factor to my observations. A lot of people would say these are desirable behaviors, but I actually hope he returns to his old self. Cats that never meow, express nothing, and stay inside all day are sad and boring as hell. It’s too early to say if he is really changed, if he’s just recovering from his trauma, or if I’m over-analyzing.

He still plays with as much energy and animal instinct as before, making his little rattling plastic balls pay dearly when they cross his path. I haven’t heard any cats screaming and meowing outside yet like I used to, so I suspect his sex drive has decreased, as expected. Overall, I wouldn’t say there’s been a dramatic change in his behavior, thankfully. And he’s purring as much as ever, so he must be content. I still feel terrible about taking his manhood away from him, even if it was necessary, and I hope he doesn’t hold an eternal grudge against me for it.

Review: Samsung 226BW LCD, "C" Panel

andrew@andrewswihart.net (Andrew Swihart) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 19:20:33 PDT

Introduction

I just bought a Samsung 226BW to replace my aging 191T, which has served me well for 5 years. The price of quality widescreen LCDs with fast response times finally fell to my breaking point. While my 19" 191T cost almost $800 when I got it in 2002 (from a sketchy retailer with the lowest price I could find), I just got this 22" widescreen 226BW from NewEgg for under $300.

The Samsung 191T is still a great monitor; even today, it holds its own compared to a lot of modern LCDs, with its great color, classic design, screen homogeneity, and very wide viewing angle. Pretty much everything about it is great except the response time. Rated at 25ms, the monitor that was once "the best 19" LCD on the market" has been killed in terms of response time over the years by the advent of "gaming LCDs" with TN panels. The 226BW, Samsung's latest refinement of such an LCD, has a quoted 2ms response time, making for streak-free FPS gaming. The only downside is that I'll be out of excuses for sucking at Counterstrike other than my lack of skills.

Controversy

This popular model has, however, come under scrutiny because Samsung has used LCD panels from at least three different manufacturers since its release. The monitor is sold with the same model name and no indication of a change on the packaging. You have to look at a tag on the back of the monitor or view a hidden service menu in the on-screen setup interface to find out what panel it has inside.

The use of different panels is particularly disturbing because most of the reviews of the 226BW are based on the original, and by all accounts superior, "S" panel, which is made by Samsung. The respected monitor review site Behardware praised this "S" version, specifically for its exceptional color out of the box. Then, Samsung began silently shipping the same model with a panel made by AU Optronics, the "A" version. It was found to have bad color compared to the "S", and people who ended up with one felt victimized by Samsung's bait-and-switch.

Behardware recently published an in-depth comparison of the "S" and "A" panels, along with a color profile for the "A" panel that improves its colors to being as good as the "S" panel. After reading this, I was ready to buy the monitor, even if I got an "A" version, knowing I could use the ICC profile they provided if that was the case.

Soon after that, I find that there is a third panel made by Chi Mei (CMO), called the "C" panel, which has come to inhabit most of the retail supply of 226BW's. I was already in impulse-buy mode, so I went ahead and ordered it along with a Colorvision Spyder2 for the calibration, crossing my fingers that I would be able to bring the color fidelity up to at least the level of my 5 year old 191T.

Calibration

When I first fired up the 226BW, I got nervous. The color had such an awful blue-shift that I wondered if it would ever be acceptable, even after calibration. I immediately broke out my Spyder2 and started the calibration. One thing owners of the "A" or "C" versions can be thankful for is that you do get a lot of manual display controls, which can complement the calibration. Specifically, RGB slider controls allow you dial in a fine-tuned white point, using the Spyder2 as a guide, prior to doing the full calibration. Besides that, there are Color Temperature and Gamma presets as well as MagicBright modes, all of which can be used to tweak the image to individual preference.

In setting my white-point, I tweaked the RGB sliders as little as possible so that the color difference was less than 0.50 Dab according to the Spyder2. This resulted in the values R51 G47 B50. For the automated portion of the calibration, the Spyder2 goes on for about 5 minutes or so displaying and sensing an array of reds, greens, blues, and grays. It uses the data it collects to generate a custom ICC profile that modifies the color look-up table for the entire gamma spectrum. This is what makes a calibrator like the Spyder2 so much more powerful than simple gamma controls like Adobe Gamma.

Post-Calibration

When the Spyder2 was finished, the color quality had dramatically improved. Having lived with it for a few days, I am more than satisfied with my 226BW "C", which I think now has better color accuracy than my old 191T, but only when viewed at or close to the perpendicular angle - more on that below. The Spyder2 reports a white-point Delta E of 0.7, and for that I should be ecstatic. This is taken from the Spyder2 Help file:

"A Delta E of less than 3 is good. Less than 2 is quite good. Less than 1 is excellent but not often achieved in practice (if you get Delta E less than 1, consider taking a trip to Vegas)."

This monitor does have some minor deficiencies in common with most "gaming" LCDs. The brightness is not totally uniform, and even when you face the monitor straight on, the top portion tends to be a bit darker, and the bottom portion somewhat washed out. When you move you head so that your line of sight is perpendicular with the top or bottom, that portion is corrected, but then you have an accentuated problem on the portion you moved away from. When I first started using the monitor, it bothered me a bit, but now after a couple days I'm already used to it. It's just easy to spot changes when you've used the same LCD for 5 years.

Reaction Time

If you look up the specs on the panels that are put into the 226BW, they are rated at 5ms, but Samsung increases their performance to 2ms using "RTA" overdrive, which is turned on by default. Behardware explains this well in their "A" vs. "S" comparison article. In my limited gaming thus far with Counterstrike: Source, I have absolutely no complaints. I cannot see any smearing or streaking whatsoever. Movies also look great, there is no ghosting at all that I can tell.

For a more objective measurement, I went ahead and ran the popular LCD benchmarking program PixPerAn and took 50 photos at 1/1000 second exposure. Below are representative examples of the best and worst afterglow I saw in the 50 shots:

I think the results are pretty close to the those found by Behardware when they tested the "S" version.

Improving the Color of Your "C" Panel

I hope that in following the three steps below, those who have bought a "C" version like me will be able to improve its color as dramatically as I have. I made color profiles using both 100% and 75% Brightness for anality's sake, although switching back and forth between them I can't even tell a difference.

1. Go into the setup menu of the 226BW, and choose Reset Image and Reset Color. Among other things, this will set the Brightness at 100%, which may bother some people. If you like a dimmer display, use one of the ICC profiles below that were made using 75%, 50%, and 25% Brightness.

2. Using my RGB values may or may not improve the white point on your 226BW, because of many factors that could play into things, such as different video cards. Still you could use them as a rough guide, assuming all "C" panels could benefit from the slight adjustments I made. To make the changes, navigate to Color Control in the setup menu, and set the RGB sliders to the values I mentioned above: R51 G47 B50. If nothing else, you can try them out and then revert back if you think it's worse.

3. Download an ICC profile below:

226BW(Digital)-factory-R51-G47-B50.icm
Use with Brightness at 100%
226BW(Digital)-factory-Bri75-R52-G46-B50.icm
Use with Brightness at 75%
226BW(Digital)-factory-Bri50-R51-G48-B50.icm
Use with Brightness at 50%
226BW(Digital)-factory-Bri25-R51-G47-B50.icm
Use with Brightness at 25%

And paste it here:

C:\windows\system32\spool\drivers\color\

If you're happy with my ICC profiles, buy me a drink!

XP users:

Download Microsoft's WinColor, install it, and now Color will appear in your Control Panel. Open Color, select the Profiles tab, and load one of the profiles above. Next, go to the Devices tab, choose Displays, and click Add.... Now select the profile you want to use with the 226BW, hit OK, and choose Set as Default.

To get the profile to load with Windows XP, right-click the Start button » Open All Users, navigate into Programs » Startup folder. Put a shortcut to WinColor.exe here. Right-click the shortcut, click Properties, and add /L to the end of the Target field, so it looks something like this:

"C:\Program Files\Pro Imaging Powertoys\Microsoft Color Control Panel Applet for Windows XP\WinColor.exe" /L

Don't copy and paste the above line into your Target field, since you may have installed the program to a different location. Just add a space, forward slash, and an L to the end so it looks like the above example. Also be sure you don't have any other gamma loaders in your Startup folder or otherwise set to start with Windows, such as Adobe Gamma or Powerstrip.

Vista Users:

You do not need Wincolor to use the profiles. Right click anywhere on the desktop, and from the personalize menu, select display parameters » advanced parameters » color management tab. Check Use my parameters for this peripheral. Click Add and select the ICC profile you want for the monitor, and set it to default. Click on the Advanced tab in the peripheral profile, select the desired ICC profile, and click OK. You should see the change instantly at that point.

Following these steps should improve things for anyone with a "C" version 226BW. Again, due to people using different video cards and even differences between monitors, you may not see quite the improvement that you would if you used a calibrator on your own setup. I would highly recommend the Spyder2 if you are not satisfied with the profiles I've provided.

Conclusion

I am very happy with the 226BW "C" version after calibration. If I had to use it the way it came out of the box, I would have sent it back or sold it on eBay in a heartbeat; the color was that bad. I imagine a lot of people wouldn't have a problem with it, but coming from a great monitor like the 191T, I had high expectations. Fortunately, the Spyder2 allowed my expectations to be met. There is little to complain about with this beautifully designed monitor, and I would encourage anyone on the fence to go ahead and make the purchase.

I hope this review was helpful for those who are wary of the mystery surrounding the "C" version of the 226BW, which has seemingly supplanted almost all of the stock available these days. I took some more shots of the monitor that are in my photo gallery tagged with 226BW. If you have any special tests you would like to see done, just let me know. As long as they are relatively easy to do, I'm happy to oblige.

Pros

Extremely good response time for smear-free gaming and movies
Great color possible with a custom ICC profile
Beautiful housing design looks a lot better than typical computer equipment

Cons

Color out of the box is pretty awful, with a strong blue shift
Poor viewing angle, typical of gaming LCDs with TN panels, results in a lack of display homogeneity
Lack of inputs other than DVI and VGA

Update 5/29/07:
I've added new color profiles made at 50% and 25% Brightness. Switching back and forth between the two of them, they are slightly different, but they are both significantly different than the 75% and 100% profiles. I still can't tell the 75% and 100% profiles apart for the life of me. If you like low brightness, you should try one of these new profiles.

This is how I feel about the different brightness settings: 25% is great for night surfing, 50% is probably "just right" for a lot of people, 75% shows off the monitor's luminance without hurting my eyes and is my choice for gaming, and 100% is really intense but may be preferable for gaming for some people. Still, if you feel like you need it this high you might want to get your eyes checked.

How-to: Communicate More Effectively

andrew@andrewswihart.net (Andrew Swihart) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 19:18:38 PDT

I knew a psychiatrist once who had a unique way of communicating with his patients and enabling them to express their thoughts. As a non-native English speaker, his accent also played a role. I won't be teaching you how to speak with any foreign accents today, but I will give you some practical strategies for asking questions and making the most of anything that comes out of your mouth.

Here are a few tips to help you communicate like him. First, when you are about to pose a question, don't just come out and say it. Start with something like, "I appreciate that, I wonder...", or "That is very interesting..." Once that is covered, you can start the opening part of the question: "How did you...", "What was it...", "Is there something...", or whatever is best for the question you are eventually going to ask. If you can possibly delay or add seemingly redundant language during this phase, do so without hesitation. For example, instead of "How did you..", make it "How did you come to really kind of..." This is a small nuance that you will pick up with time, and really it's just a baby step when you see where we are going with this. Don't forget to hold back the urge to ask anything just yet!!!

Now, this part is crucial!! Add several repetitions of the following phrases in any random order: "that really just absolutely", "kind of really", "just kind of absolutely", "that you know just", "really kind of". This is the core set of phrases you should work with, and don't worry if you feel like you are saying some of them twice or even three times. The person you are talking to won't realize this; rather, they will be intrigued by the care with which are are posing the question and will be coming up with their best possible response. Once you have done this for about 10 to 20 seconds, that should be enough, and you can go ahead and ask your question.

AND THEN, end all of your questions with "and everything." This is the master stroke that will drive your ability to engage people through the roof. It makes anything that was just said seem all-important, and people will take notice even if they weren't listening, trying to remember the last few words you have uttered. I can't emphasize this enough: say "and everything" after EVERYTHING you say, it makes all the difference.

To review, I'll give an example of how to pose a question using these techniques:

"That's very interesting, now I'm wondering how all of these kinds of things really played into the situation where you know you just kind of really absolutely came to this point where you were just feeling like you should absolutely, kind of DO something about what you've been really struggling with and everything."

Note this question does not end with a question mark, because it was not actually a question. Another thing is that you tend to forget what you were asking when you use these techniques. It doesn't matter either, as long as you can elicit some kind of a response, it's fine.

Practice using these techniques whenever you interact with people, and you'll be surprised at how much more engaging you become to anyone within earshot!

Barry Gibb - The King?

andrew@andrewswihart.net (Andrew Swihart) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 19:18:51 PDT

At this very moment, I'm listening to the Billboard Top 100 of 1978. I randomly came across this selection of hit songs from before I was born. It's pretty impressive that eight out of the top fourteen songs (and 3 out of the top 5) were written by Barry Gibb. In the middle below, his look is a classic, what a pimp. He kind of resembles the new Burger King guy, actually.

I was struck by this claim on Barry's official website:

"As a songwriter he is second only to the Lennon / McCartney relationship."

I guess you could say I'm a big Brian Wilson proponent. His album, "Pet Sounds," is consisitently ranked at or near #1 for album of all time in various lists. Paul McCartney himself has said several times that it is the greatest album ever. This is just one of a handful of artists who is impossible to rank in terms of their artistic merit, no matter how much of a fan you may be of them or of yourself.

So, I was a bit put off by the claim on Barry Gibb's website. Perhaps this is backed up with some objective measure of the money he's made or how his songs have fared on the charts. I'll admit, after listening to "Stayin' Alive" and "Night Fever" among several other great songs, his songwriting ability is pretty amazing. And he does look a lot like the Burger King guy. Decide for yourself: here are Barry Gibb's top eight from 1978:

Andy Gibb - Shadow Dancing
Bee Gees - Night Fever
Bee Gees - Stayin' Alive
Bee Gees - How Deep Is Your Love
Andy Gibb - Love is Thicker Than Water
Frankie Valli - Grease
John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John - You're the One That I Want
Samantha Sang and the Bee Gees - Emotion

The Instant Expert

andrew@andrewswihart.net (Andrew Swihart) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 14:31:38 PDT

Here's another idea that I hope will be a big hit on my website. I'm going to go off and learn about various random subjects for a couple minutes or so, then deliver my expert reports right here on AndrewSwihart.net.

I'm calling this the Instant Expert series. Its simple: all I have to do is do a couple Google searches on a topic, see what I find, decide what I think about it, and then I'll be an expert on it!

You can look forward to these reports as I go becoming an expert on several topics very quickly. You won't have to waste your own time learning about anything ever again.

What I'm Doing Right Now

andrew@andrewswihart.net (Andrew Swihart) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 19:18:59 PDT

I have an idea for a new type of article on this site. Here's the idea: I will basically tell you what I'm doing during a period of time and write it up with pictures and diagrams as if it were an interesting article. I see these kinds of articles all over the web so I figure I might as well give it a shot.

Final Rotation

andrew@andrewswihart.net (Andrew Swihart) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:19:40 PDT

From the mind of Alex Ryan, there comes a movie so captivating and disturbing, it will forever change the way you think about all things medical-related. Drawing from our own medical school experiences, it reveals the imprisoning reality of being a medical student.

Alex and I put this movie at the end of 4th year of medical school, and it was shown when we graduated to an audience of hundreds of doctors and students on a huge movie screen.

Manor House 2

andrew@andrewswihart.net (Andrew Swihart) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 18:22:32 PDT

Made in a small boxy room, Manor House 2 overcame the odds and showed that the bedroom really can be just as good as a professional recording studio. An audiophile’s delight, this album represents perfection in audio engineering and production.

Manor House 1

andrew@andrewswihart.net (Andrew Swihart) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:54:07 PDT

If you want original audio recorded with real microphones, look no further. Manor House 1 has everything you ever wanted and more. I don’t know what else I can say about this album. I think it might be the shortest one.

Webster Hall

andrew@andrewswihart.net (Andrew Swihart) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:58:54 PDT

One of the most classic albums ever produced, The Webster Hall Sessions stands as some of the greatest music ever recorded. You will never believe it when you hear this album for the first time. Here it is now, available for download.

Bouquet Gardens

andrew@andrewswihart.net (Andrew Swihart) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 14:08:34 PDT

An album once hailed as "something to listen to," and a "bunch of songs," The Bouquet Gardens Sessions represents the very consecration of what was to become the Andrew Swihart Collection as we now know it. No real guitars or mics in sight; this is pure MIDI on my old Yamaha S80 keyboard.

In the Line of Blood

andrew@andrewswihart.net (Andrew Swihart) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 19:37:30 PDT

A laugh-out-loud comedy for the whole family! Clint Eastwood (played by Aron Majic) is on a mission to stop a madman from giving the president AIDS during a bloody haircut in his salon. Failing to save the president in 1963, he is determined to sacrifice his own life this time, even if it means taking AIDS for the president.

Made in 1993 for a school project, this movie stands as the highest quality production to come out of the Andrew Swihart and Aron Majic collaborations of the early 90's. I can't even remember how we came up with the whole plot line and the script, and I'm still impressed with some of the acting and lines we came up with, many on the spot on the first take.

Aron is hilarious playing Clint Eastwood, a secret service agent who must protect the president at all costs. I play John Paul, a crazed but brilliant barber who is giving AIDS to as many people as he can. The movie is based on "In the Line of Fire," a great suspense starring Clint Eastwood and John Malkovich. Classic Kiss songs serve as the soundtrack, for your enjoyment.