Ponderings, exposition, and a recording of my life…

Brunch @ Drexels

07 31 11'

Written by Matthew

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I had the good fortune to visit Drexels for brunch yesterday with Jen. We chowed down on french toast and waffles, along with hot chocolate and grapefruit juice. Drexels is a longtime favourite of mine and is a bit of an institution among the Christchurch community at large – it is always packed and you usually need to book a week in advance to get a decent table! Another time I will write in more detail about the place , but it has a fantastic bustling atmosphere and they serve excellent American-style breakfasts. If you get a chance, go visit!

Location: Drexels, Westfield Mall, Rotherham St, Riccarton

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Food Reviews

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Flatting – A Payment Model

07 31 11'

Written by Matthew

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I’ve been flatting in the same flat for six years now, some flatmates come and go and others stay the same. During this time, we have been trying to find a good model for figuring out how much to charge each flatmate. We started with a basic model – everyone pays the same. This was all well and good as all of the rooms were a fairly similar size. Then we started to have issues with couples sharing rooms and what happens when you want to rent out that small room? Is a system where what people pay is simply based on intuition good enough? I didn’t think it was – so I devised a new model. It still has it’s limitations but is fairly sound, seems to be fair, is not inordinately complex, and corresponds well with what would seem intuitively right.

The model centers around the concept that when you rent you are in effect paying for the space you use. In the model all space – be it your bedroom, the kitchen or the toilet is treated as equal. It’s the amount of space that an area uses that counts. Lets give a simple example of the system at work. Andy, Bob, and Charlotte all live in a nice new house and all have the same sized bedrooms – one each! If the rent is $300, they will all end up paying $100 each – it’s fair! But why?

The facts:

  • The total rent of the house is $300 per week.
  • The total floor area (or space) in the house is 120 square meters
  • Andy’s bedroom has a floor area of 20 square meters
  • Bob’s bedroom has a floor area of 20 square meters
  • Charlotte’s bedroom has a floor area of 20 square meters

The model:

  • The cost per sq m is 300/120 = $2.5 per sq m
  • 60 sq m of the house is bedrooms, 60 sq m is general living space.
  • Each flatmate will pay their share of the general living space, this accounts to (60/3)*2.5 = $50
  • Each flatmate will pay for the exclusive use of their own room, this is 20 * 2.5 = $50
  • Therefore the total per flatmate is $50 + $50 = $100 per week.

Seems simple enough right? Lets show a slightly more complicated example:

The facts:

  • Andy, Bob, and Charlotte move into a new flat with Dave and Emma.
  • The total rent is $520.
  • The floor area of the house is 180 sq m
  • Andy and Emma are a couple sharing one room, it’s pretty big at 30 sq m
  • Bob has a little poky room at only 8 sq m
  • Charlotte and Dave are also a couple sharing a room, it’s also quite large at 20 sq m.
  • Dave works from home, so has an office which is all his space at 16 sq m.

The model:

  • The cost per sq m is 520/180 = $2.88
  • There is 180 – (30 + 8 + 20 + 16) = 106 sq m of general living space.
  • Each flatmate will pay for their share of the general living space at (106/5)*2.88 = $61.30
  • Andy and Emma are going to pay (30/2)*$2.88 = $43.20 each for their room. They will pay $61.30 + $43.30 = $104.60 each per week.
  • Bob is going to pay 8 * $2.88 = $23.00 for his room. He will pay $23.00 + $61.30 = $84.30 per week.
  • Charlotte and Dave are going to pay (20/2) * $2.88 = $28.90 each for their room. Charlotte will pay $61.30 + $28.90 = $90.20 per week.
  • Dave has an office, this will cost him 16 * $2.88 = $46.10. He will pay $61.30 + $28.90 + $46.10 = $136.30 per week.
  • This adds back up to $104.60 + $104.60 + $84.30 + $90.20 + $136.30 = $520.

Hopefully that all made sense. Would you agree that this seems fair? The system does have some limitations, most of these can be resolved by adding a weighting to the value of each square m, but this adds an additional level of complexity.

Some of the limitations and other considerations are:

  • Individual rooms may be better decorated, be quieter, better insulated, get more morning sunlight
  • If the property has a garden or garage this system does not be default add these into the calculation, however the system tends to provide a balance towards the social areas of the house, and therefore not including external areas in the calculation for general living space seems to counteract this.
  • It does not account for human actions – if Dave always does all the cleaning, shopping, and prepares the meals – maybe he should be paying less?
  • It doesn’t account for house guests. But here you have a number of options – you can choose not to charge them, or if they don’t have there own space, maybe add them into the ratio of usage for general living space, or just get them to pay for dinner!
  • The system makes the assumption that all flatmates live in the flat an about equal amount of time. While you might argue that absentee flatmates are not using the general living space and therefore shouldn’t pay for it, there is an opportunity cost that the other flatmates could choose to rent the space to someone who is present.
  • In some flats the flat is rented out per room – the flatmates don’t really get a say – but the landlord could still use this model to provide a fair charging system.

What do you think? What do you use for your own flat? Do you think this model is fair? Too complicated? Want to try it for yourself? I have included a spreadsheet for good measure - Rent Calculator

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General

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Brunch @ Beauvais Cafe

07 24 11'

Written by Matthew

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About a week ago, a Nicky and I had an impromptu brunch at Beauvais Cafe. We were looking for something new and glancing through the Entertainment Book listed their name with a decent discount. So we decided to give it a try. It’s a little out of the centre of town and in the suburbs, but when we arrived, it was pretty full. The staff were very polite and very promptly found us a table. The decor was pleasant but there were little details, like really roughly finished paintwork, that looked a little incongruent with the rest of the building.

We ordered large bowls of latte, which arrived promptly and were really rather good. They both tasted a tad burnt on the first sip, but we were pleasantly surprised when that disappeared. The food was on the pricer side of breakfast establishments – with prices at around $20 for a main meal. We ordered, read the prerequisite papers, and conversed while waiting – which wasn’t short but certainly wasn’t excessively long.

The food was excellent – it looks like the chef had really taken an interest in trying to make the standard breakfast fare interesting. In addition, they were more than willing to be flexible – extra bacon for Nicky and vegetarian for me. Nicky had the eggs benedict – which had mesculin rather spinach and apparently worked really well. The eggs were excellently cooked and the hollandaise was outstanding. The breakfast muffins were homemade and had much more substance than the usual airy things that are served in eggs benedict.

My cooked breakfast was fantastic, though it could have used something like a relish to break through the other flavours. The bread was a full bodied ciabatta, the mushrooms were excellently flavoured, and the tartness of the feta on the sweet roasted tomato was an excellent combination. The hash brown was almost like a rosti – it was excellent, probably one of the best hash browns I have eaten.

All in all it was a good experience. If you have an entertainment book, it is also pretty good value. I’ll be back soon!

Location: Beauvais Cafe, 186 Yaldhurst Rd, Avonhead, Christchurch.

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Brunch @ Yaza

07 02 11'

Written by Matthew

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This morning, in addition to a number of errands in town, my mother and I visited Yaza for brunch. It fronts out onto the famous Nelson Saturday market and by 10am is always packed – luckily we got there early enough to find a good table! Yaza is a bit of a Nelson institution – they are famous for their cheese scones, which are consistently warm, cheesy, and totally addictive. In addition, they are served with a over-sized wedge of butter – what better way of indulging? We have been coming here for years.

The venue is decorated with retro 1970s furniture – from the chrome legged tables, to the flowe- finished couches, the orange, yellow, and black chairs, to wacky wall decorations. You can either sit inside and read the paper or outside and people watch. The staff are always friendly and there are a lot of little touches that give this place character – the monthly philosophy discussion sessions, the toilet wallpapered in adverts for everything considered cool four decades ago,  the solid and polished wood serving counters, and the lime green and red walls. Finally the napkins always contain a quotation – today mine was “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”.

I opted for the Big T. for brunch – I seemed to remember that the T used to stand for Tahunanui, but this has long been lost in the mist of history. It consists of two crisp slabs of focaccia with the prerequisite wedges of butter, two poached eggs, blanched spinach, fried tomato, hashed potatoes, mushrooms, a chickpea croquette, tomato salsa, caramelised onion chutney, homemade mayonnaise, and freshly cracked pepper. You know, the works! I love this kind of breakfast – lots of little bits and pieces to try and taste together. It was all really well cooked and distinctly delicious. My mother, one for tradition, opted for her standard bowl of latte and a cheese scone.

If you find yourself in Nelson, I recommend you give this place a visit. In addition to their excellent coffee and brunch fare, they also have a wide selection of cabinet food – great pizza, pasta, pies. I don’t really have anything bad to say about them. The prices are pretty reasonable as well. They also do excellent freshly squeezed juices and smoothies. If you find yourself in Nelson, let me know what you think!

Location: Yaza Cafe, Montgomery Sq., Nelson

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Brunch @ The Apple Shed

07 01 11'

Written by Matthew

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I’m on vacation in Nelson this week. This morning I had the pleasure of visiting the Apple Shed, a well appointed cafe on the wharf at the Mapua estuary. This place has a fantastic atmosphere – outside roughly hewn tables sit along the water front, the cafe itself sits out over the estuary and large windows look out over the stunning vista – sea birds, boats at anchor, and picturesque marshes in the distance. Inside the tables well appointed with comfortable chairs, surrounding a large open fire in the middle of the venue. It features a modern look with high backed red leather chairs, well designed menus and abstract art on the walls.

I have been coming here for lunch for many years with family and friends. In years past, the venue had different owners and was primarily a smoke house for the on-site fish smokery – which still exists in a slightly reduced capacity. The new owners have broadened out the menu to appeal to a wider audience.

I had the Eggs Benedict – a brunch time favourite of mine. They were sublime – very well presented, perfectly cooked. The hollandaise sauce was bright, fresh, creamy, and well seasoned – and in just the right quantity. A distinct contrast from my last brunch! My mother, opted for a light lunch of a garden salad with homemade bread and butter. Rounded off with two large bowls of Latte it was a perfect meal. The conversation ranged from local politics, to the riots in Greece, to free speech, free will, societal expectations, and the nature of ‘work’.

We were still a little peckish after the meal, so opted to share a dessert – Orange blossom crème brûlée, with pistachio baklava, and a berry coulis. It was beautifully presented – and again the chef did him or herself proud. The brûlée was a perfect consistency and temperature, with subtle floral and citrus overtones. The brulee was thick and freshly done, without managing to liquefy the entire dish. The baklava, though a little dry as baklava go, was tasty and acted like a more lively and less traditional biscotti. The coulis, was fresh and just acidic enough to counteract the sweetness of the rest of the dish. This was definitely the best crème brûlée I have had in a long time and it was big enough to share!

I don’t really have anything bad to say about the place – except perhaps it was a little tiny bit pricey. However, for a good eating experience it is well worth it! I thoroughly recommend you visit next time you head up Nelson way!

Location: The Apple Shed, Shed 3, Mapua Wharf, Nelson

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Brunch @ Portstone Garden Café

06 28 11'

Written by Matthew

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Being on the east side of Christchurch, starving, and in need of brunch and a strong coffee – we eventually found a place to relax last Sunday morning. The Portstone Garden Café looked really promising – full of people – all of the right age and dress to have good taste, fairly nice decor – with a sort of rustic garden theme that fit in nicely with the garden centre it was attached to. There was even a couch or two and some well padded booths that were unfortunately already in use. This looked like my kind of place!

The staff were friendly, seemingly competent, and were even able to deal with my being vegetarian. A large cabinet of cakes and savory pastries and pies looked appetizing and were remarkably well priced - especially at $6 for a giant piece of carrot cake. We were running a tad late, as my flatmate Ben had places to be. I ordered the homemade hash browns with spinach, poached eggs and hollandaise sauce and a large Latte. Interestingly, this was listed seperately from the eggs benedict. Ben had a steak and mushroom pie from the cabinet.

Our meals arrived very promptly, and surprisingly a long time before our coffees. Ben’s pie was excellent, crispy, well seasoned, very well presented and by all accounts delicious. I was a little less sold on my hashbowns al la eggs benedict. To be honest, in retrospect, there wasn’t much right with the meal – it was entirely over priced, especially compared to cabinet food, at $18. The presentation was sloppy, the hashbrowns soft, mushy, squashed, unappealing. The spinach mix was a little strange, but I can’t put my finger on exactly what was wrong with it – maybe the chunks of under cooked onion. The poached eggs were pretty good, though a tad under cooked for my liking. My real dislike of this meal was the (certainly generous) lashings of hollandaise sauce. It was actually rather disgusting and left me feeling nauseous for a number of hours afterwards. I think the best way to describe it would be like the taste of warmed ETA salad cream, coloured to have the appearance of hollandaise. This is not hollandaise sauce. Just because it is an emulsified fat with a little acid added, doesn’t mean that it is the same food stuff. It’s like calling playdough a cake because it’s also made with flour.

In an attempt not to waste the food, I ordered some toast to go along side. Even the toast was thin, mass produced cardboard. Finally the coffee arrived. Neither of us were very impressed – it was very watery. At least it wasn’t burnt! All in all, the place is actually not too bad. But, I would not recommend eating off the menu – the cabinet food is superior. These guys should revamp their menu and I will visit again! We need as many decent places as we can get in Christchurch these days.

Oh, and just one final thing. Having a large and imposing pepper grinder is an awesome addition to a restaurant and adds a touch of class to any meal. However, for no extra effort and a huge customer service bonus, the wait staff should apply the pepper for you, not just hand you the grinder.

Location: Portstone Garden Café, 465 Ferry Road, Christchurch

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Brunch Reviews

06 26 11'

Written by Matthew

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Hey everyone!

I’m planning to use this blog to write a few reviews on restaurants and cafes that I have had the good (or mis) fortune of visiting. For the most part these will be centered around brunch. I absolutely love going out to brunch – chatting about the week ahead, politics, science, and enjoying excellent food in a comfortable setting. However, while a lot of my past brunch experiences have been amazing, such as a visit to the fabulously upper class breakfast restaurant - The Wolseley in the center of London, some have been distinctly disappointing.

A little bit of history on the term brunch. As is obviously apparent, brunch is a portmanteau of ‘breakfast‘ and ‘lunch‘. While some sources place the origin with a New York reporter in 1906, the most likely source is that it developed as student slang in the UK and it’s first reported use is in a magazine known as Hunter’s Weekly in 1895 by Mr. Guy Beringer. It is most commonly found as an institution in the USA (in particular New York City) and Canada. It is also quite common in France (where it is known as le grand petit déjeuner – literally the big little lunch) and Germany. Brunch is traditionally considered to be a meal eaten between from around 10am to 1pm; however in many places it is an all day affair on Sundays. Interestingly, Dubai has a Friday brunch tradition.

For the most part this blog will be discussing restaurants and cafes in the Christchurch area, New Zealand. If you are nearby or visit from time to time, listen in!

Brunch @ My Place!

Brunch @ My Place!

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Stuffed Mushrooms

05 09 11'

Written by Matthew

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Several days ago I celebrated my birthday and had a bit of an informal dinner party, among the starters was a stuffed mushroom recipe that was made up on the spot. A good friend of mine requested I post the recipe, so without further ado:

Cream Cheese Stuffed Mushrooms

 

Ingredients

  • 30 small button mushrooms. You could use bigger mushrooms, but you would use less and need to cook them longer.
  • 125 g of decent cream cheese
  • 1 tsp cracked pepper
  • 2 finely chopped cloves of garlic
  • a handful of chopped herbs, mainly sage
  • 2 tbs olive oil

Method

  1. Preheat oven to 220C, fan bake.
  2. Mix the cream cheese with the pepper, garlic, and herbs.
  3. Remove the stalks from the mushrooms. You don’t need to wash or peel them!
  4. Fill the mushrooms with the cream cheese mixture, this is easiest if applied just by smearing each mushroom with a finger full of the mixture.
  5. Place the mushrooms into a baking tray, add half a cup of water to the tray and then splash on the olive oil.
  6. Place in the oven and cook for around 10 minutes, until the mushrooms have shrunk and they are all juicy.
  7. Serve as a canape or as a small side dish.

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Cooking

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Appropriate Units – Revised

01 20 11'

Written by Matthew

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About a week ago, I was mulling over the concept of appropriate units, that is which unit of a system should one use to represent a measurement. If you want to read about it, have a look at this post.

At the end of that post I detail a possible solution, but I wasn’t sold on my solution and wanted a bit of feedback from a wider audience. I devised this questionnaire to provide an interesting and abstracted way of getting the data. Writing the form was interesting, and while I think most people got what I was getting at, there were a number of influencing factors that I should have taken into account. It has been way to long since I last did anything of the type.

People were influenced by the choice of unit names and listed colours. I’m not particularly concerned by the unit names as this was fairly unavoidable if I didn’t want to use real units. I also tried to be consistent within a question to avoid favouritism due to it being a interesting word. My rationale for not using real units was that I wanted to avoid the associations between using a cup or using a quart. Most of my answers come from a group of people primarily using the metric system, and as such a cup would have been favoured to a high degree because of its name. Colours probably had some influence, but I suspect that it was minimal.

An informal analysis of the first set of results I obtained proved interesting, and was corroborated by the comments I received.

  • Most people don’t unconsciously make a distinction between using a measure and making a measurement. But when forced people do make it. This turned out to be a vital distinction as measuring 160 mL is ok, but 160 teaspoons is definitely not.
  • In the case of using a measure the main factors were that it had to be as close to one as possible, numbers above should be exponentially weighted as they get higher, numbers below (i.e. between 1 and 0) should be inverted and then weighted in a similar fashion. In addition measures should be favoured over measurements, as:
    • More people have basic measurement equipment like cups in the kitchen.
    • Measures, while on the whole less accurate, are accurate enough for most forms of cooking.
    • People seem to like using measures more. This may just be a habit.
  • In the case of measurements, the following factors seem important:
    • A small starting digit.
    • The last significant figure should be weighted in favour of 5 or 0, followed by 2
    • Numbers that benefit from being in scientific form of negative should be penalised
    • Long numbers should be penalised
    • Interestingly, whole numbers are not as important as I thought, however, limiting the number of leading and trailing zeroes is.

I have implemented an algorithm based on these results. It seems to work pretty well. It’s one limitation is that its results are based on a static number of significant figures that may not be the same number of significant figures as the user wishes to use. However this point is not particularly relevant if the code base is used specifically for cooking as most cooking statistics have only 1 to 3 significant figures.

Thanks to everyone who completed the form for me!

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Software Development

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Appropriate Units

01 10 11'

Written by Matthew

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Overview

Recently I have been programming a unit conversion system to automatically convert between units of different systems of measurement. So for example the standard metric system of volume is based on the litre (L) and multiples of it as determined by standard SI prefixes, for example a millilitre (mL). Values in this system can be converted to other systems such as an Imperial system comprising of fluid ounces (fl oz), quarts (qt), pints, (pt), and gallons (gal).

Simple conversions between such systems are fairly simplistic, we follow these steps:

  1. We convert our initial measurement to an arbitrary value in the same system. For example we can divide a US gallon by 128 to get a fluid ounce.
  2. We convert to our standardised measurement for that system into a standardised measurement for the desired system. For example by dividing our measurement, now in US fluid ounces by 29.57 to convert it to millilitres. In practice this may go through a standardised base system, so we can convert from US fluid ounces to UK fluid ounces by going through an intermediary system such as metric system of litres.
  3. Now we have an accurate measurement in the new system. However our initial measurement in gallons now looks rather unwieldy in  millilitres. The obvious next step is to convert it back to a sensible measurement, maybe litres. Such a conversion is just a reversal of step one.

Easy right? What is the hard part in this process? The sheer amount of country specific systems is just tedious, but not difficult.

Question

One hard question arises:

When should we convert between units in the same system?

This part is going to be a bit of a thought experiment for me…

It appears that no one has answered this question before. Or if they have, I can’t find it. We are taught to intuitively convert between units: 230 metres sounds right, 23,000 centimetres just sounds wrong. Even the BIPM, the official organisation of SI units has nothing to say. In talking to a few people there seems to be a vague conclusion as to what ‘sounds’ right. It seems to come to come down to the number of significant figures one plans to use and the size of the number.

Lets explore a simple SI system, which is probably fairly consistent across all SI systems:

The Metre (or Meter for you American types) - 1 m = 100 cm = 1,000 mm = 0.001 km

  • 123.45 mm sounds better than 0.12345 m and 12.345 cm (5.sf) – we like to split up numbers into manageable parts. Though this becomes fairly irrelevant when we have lots of significant figures, we want just the first part to be manageable. For example, 123,456,789.5678923 m is awful, 123.4567895678923 Mm is better, or at least it would be if we used the megametre on an everyday basis.
  • Scientists and engineers will say it is nicer to take that last measurement and put it into scientific form, but while this is all very well for large units, we don’t like reading scientific form for more ‘normal’ values that we might encounter on an everyday basis. Cut a 320 cm length is better that 3.2 x 10^1 m, 3.2 m is best (assuming 2 s.f.).
  • From what I can see, minimising the total number of characters is what counts. 3.2 m has two three characters to show the value. 320 cm also has three, but dots are better than zero as we can use it to break down the number in our head.

Some Rules

So using this, let’s tentatively set out some formal rules. Note, this is currently an experimental idea and not tested!

  1. We need to know value, initial unit, available units and the multiplier required to each (in the final system), and the final number of s.f. the number is required in.
  2. If current number characters in value (including commas, place holder zeroes and dots) < the number of characters of converted values, then it is the best choice.
  3. If this is tied, those with the lowest number place holder zeros are preferred. Followed by commas. Followed by dots (in systems where commas not dots separate large number strings).
  4. If all else fails, the unit closest the default should be used, presumably this will be a little more familiar and useful – at least for SI systems.
  5. For values with low significant figures (where s.f. <  4), step iii. will be pretty much irrelevant.
  6. If the total length is > s.f. + 5 then scientific notation should be used.
  7. For unit systems outside a standard metric view, use the larger unit.

Here you go sir, your units shaken not stirred.

Does this make logical sense to you? Any comments?

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Software Development

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