The Richter Scale^®

We seem to be eating out a lot (or perhaps I am just writing about it more), but two nights ago, Linda and I were invited by a visiting friend of ours to enjoy a dinner at Capriccio, our favorite fine dining restaurant on Bonaire. Capriccio is run by two Italians with a passion for food and each other - Lola and Andrea (male chef). Both worked in the Los Angeles restaurant scene until about 10 years ago when they moved to Bonaire and started their restaurant here.

Capriccio has won numerous awards for their wine cellar, which has been labeled as one of the best in the entire Caribbean by Wine Spectator magazine, incidentally. I find that the number of wine choices is too great for me, so invariably I have Lola pick a bottle for me. And she never fails to find something interesting and perfect for the meal.

The menu at Capriccio is Italian, featuring a wide range of appetizers and entrees - traditional and non-traditional alike. For those with less adventurous palates a very nice thin crust pizza is available, as well as a variety of home made pastas. For those with broader tastes, a number of special entrees are available, in addition to things like the beef carpaccio appetizer.

My absolute favorite thing at Capriccio (in addition to the warm and personal service and great wine selection) are the desserts, ranging from a delectable tira misu to panne cotta and wonderful homemade ice creams and sorbets.

For our meal, Linda ordered the osso bucco, while I had the duck in a balsamic glaze. Our friend Kitty whose treat dinner was, had a carpaccio appetizer followed by a variant on penne paesana. Linda’s and my entrees came with salad, and we, as we always do, asked Lola to switch our garden salads for Caesar salads with extra anchovies. Hands down, Capriccio has the best Caesar on Bonaire, and anchovies which are just right - flavorful and not mushy in any way.

All of our dishes were excellent, and well presented. With dinner Linda and I enjoyed most of a bottle of a 2003 Morellino di Scansano from the Lohsa vineyard, which Lola explained in great detail to us as a trendy red wine from Tuscany which is made from grapes closely related to the Sanvgiovese grapes used to make Chianti. It was an excellent match to our meal. We took the bottle home with us as we could not finish it all without hurting ourselves.

I should mention that Kitty lived on Bonaire for about two years, and the last meal we had with her and her now ex-husband Marc was at Capriccio the night before they moved back to Holland. Amazingly, Lola remembered what Kitty’s favorite dish was and what she drank (apple juice).

After dinner our children joined us for dessert (a wonderful friend dropped them off after their school Christmas party), and as we were unable to decide what we wanted to have for dessert, Lola made us a “Grand Dessert”, which in this case (and much to our surprise) included one of every dessert on the menu. It was heavenly, but too much for three adults and two tired children. But we did well - there were only a few small portions left on the tray.

I honestly have no idea how much dinner was since it was Kitty’s treat (thanks again Kitty!), but do know that typically Linda and I will spend between $100-120 for the two of us at Capriccio’s for dinner, and feel that it is worth every cent.

On The Richter Scale, I give Capriccio’s a 9.0 out of 10.0. It’s a must when visiting Bonaire, and make sure to tell Lola that Jake sent you.

Capriccio Restaurant is located at Kaya Isla Riba 1 near the water front in downtown Kralendijk. Phone +599-7 17-7230

I had the Media Center Extender running on my original Xbox some months ago, though not soon enough as it took Sony forever to release an update to bring my VAIO desktop (purchased August 2004) up to Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. However, I have pretty much never used it since.

And I suspect it may end up being the same with the Media Center Extender on my Xbox 360.

The reasons for this are simple, but I will point out that they may not apply to everyone.

First, I don’t use my PC for much MCE video recording - I generally don’t record the over the air programs or the ones from the TDS (terrestrial digital service - like DirecTV, but land based instead of satellite) because the quality of the signal isn’t great on either, and because I don’t have any easy way for the MCE PC to switch channels on the marginally better TDS system (none of the remote controller set-up options works for the custom Zenith set-top box).

Second, on the rare occasions I have used my PC for recording programs, they are programs I would rather my children didn’t have access to (think HBO or Showtime programming in the 9pm and later time slots and you’ll get the idea). While I know there are parental controls available on the Xbox 360, they do not appear to apply to the programming I’ve recorded from our local TV signal sources. I don’t need my children asking me why all those people on the shows I recorded, like Penn & Teller: Bullsh*t! on Showtime, or Entourage on HBO, swear all the time. A similar issue applies to my photos - I don’t want non-family using my Xbox 360 to be able to view all the photos on my network storage - nothing embarrassing there, but there are about 15,000 images from the last three or four years, and some are more personal and private than others.

Third, video over the Xbox 360 wireless connection is poor and unsteady. I know they warn you about it, but the five-port Ethernet switch in my entertainment system is full (Xbox, PS2, GameCube, networked Onkyo receiver, and the network connection), and I didn’t want to bother adding another switch.

Fourth, while the music playback system on the Xbox 360 Media Center Extender is nice, once you get it to recognize and catalog music in locations other than the annoyingly default “My Documents” directory, the free remote (the short one) I got with my Xbox 360 has no apparent way to allow me to enter letters into the search fields for the artists or albums or songs I want, meaning that if I want to listen to Paul Simon’s music in my 400+ CD digitized collection, I have to scroll all the way down - a horribly painful and tedious process. Some letter/number keys on the remote would have been a useful touch. I also had the impression that the MCE remote control I got for the Xbox should work (per the configuration settings in the Xbox 360), but no joy there either. And I really have no desire to buy a more functional remote to make up for it.

And finally, I don’t want to have to keep my computer powered on all the time on the off chance I might want to watch a recorded movie or show, or listen to music. I already have a couple of file servers running 24/7 (main one is a Linux box with RAID-0, and the other is a very old PC running bare bones Windows XP for performing back-ups every night), and that’s enough. And I don’t want to have to boot up my PC just to watch some recorded video. Heck, it’s easier for me to just burn it to a DVD and watch it that way.

So, one of the big reasons Microsoft touts for putting an Xbox 360 in the living room “for the whole family to use” just does not fly in my household. It is nice for playing games though.

Last night, my wife and I had occasion to enjoy a meal at Le Flamboyant - one of our favorite restaurants here on the island of Bonaire. We had not eaten there in many months due to my extensive travels off-island.

At Le Flamboyant one can dine indoors or outdoors in a secluded courtyard. As we seemed to be rain free for the night, we opted to enjoy the open air. Mosquitos (due to our recent rains) were definitely present, but we wore long pants and sock and that thwarted most of them.

We found the menu had changed completely since our last visit, but still with many tantalizing items to choose from, and with a decidedly French flair.  The owners and operators or Le Flamboyant are Govert Strootman and Veronique Badet. Govert is a Dutchman, and Veronique is French, which certainly explains the French influence on the menu.

As we were heading to a friend’s engagement party later that night, we opted to eat lightly - no multiple courses, although it still felt like we had a lot of food. We started with a glass each of a Chilean Sauvignon Blanc (Santa Rita) - inexpensive, but tasty and crisp.

Linda, my wife, opted for the Penne Flamboyant - a tasty pasta dish with chicken and mushrooms, while I selected a salad and soup as my meal.

The tomato soup I ordered was garnished with fresh basil and whipped seasoned butter, and was perfect. Rich without being overbearing, and very flavorful without being overly spiced or salted.

My salad was the Scallop and Parma Ham salad, and featured six small scallops tastefully arranged around a small green salad topped with crispy parma ham - almost like bacon but not so greasy. The scallops were exquisite, and the saltiness of the parma ham provided a nice counterpoint - in flavor and texture. The lettuce and vegetables in the salad provided balance between the scallops and ham.

We did splurge (stomach-wise) for the Petit Grand Dessert to finish the meal with (we did share it though). The Petit Grand Dessert featured a taste of every dessert on the menu, in miniature. There was a scoop of mango sorbet, a sliver of a rich chocolate cake, a piece of cheese cake, and some other chocolate-oriented dessert I could not expressly identify other than to say that it, and the other samples, were gone in a couple of minutes, accompanied by lots of Mmmms! and Aahhhs!

Without tip, the bill ran to approximately US$40.00. Well worth it.

On The Richter Scale, I give Le Flamboyant a 9.0 out of 10.0, and will add that it remains one of our favorites here on Bonaire. We were definitely not let down.

I would like to mention that Le Flamboyant also sports a cute gift shop inside the large interior space with all sorts of ecletic items, including hand made purses, fresh grind spices and seasonings, art work, and a variety of other unique items. So, in addition to a great meal, you can also do a bit of souvenir or gift shopping there.

Le Flamboyant is located at Kaya Grandi 12 - right in the heart of Kralendijk. Phone +599-7 17-3919.

So, after days spent mostly playing my Xbox 360, my son asked me to play Star Wars Battlefront II with him on the Xbox, and after only a few minutes of gameplay it finally hit me how visually spoiled the Xbox 360 has made me. The Xbox connected via component video doesn’t even touch the Xbox 360 connected via the VGA/PC connection on my HDTV system.

Battlefront II in single player mode is okay and pretty playable, but in split screen multi-player mode, pixel chunkiness and coarse graphics (in contrast to the Xbox 360’s detailed high resolution output) really detracts from game play (never mind making it much more difficult to clearly see your enemies and navigate).

Having read recently about some Microsoft Xbox 360 evangelist commenting that the emulation of the Xbox on the 360 actually made Xbox games look better, I decided to give Star Wars Battlefront II a spin in my Xbox 360. Woe was me - the game is not yet support by the latest emulation code from Microsoft (list of what has been certified to work is here).

I am increasingly coming to appreciate the graphics capability and visual acuity the Xbox 360 provides. I guess you don’t know how good you have it until you go back to what you were using before.

I still have regular mini-frag fests with my kids and their friends over SystemLink on my office Xbox and the one in the living room, mostly playing Halo 2, and again, in single player mode (on my system - it’s usual 2, 3, or four of them in the living room on a single screen), that’s fine. Although some might question my gloating when I kick butt against a posse of 8 and 10 year olds (but I should note that sometimes they kick my butt too).

I definitely won’t be getting rid of any of my current generation consoles, but I suspect I will be spending more and more time with the next generation, including the Xbox 360.

I have observed a number of things the our new Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner does which I think make for good life lessons, so, without further ado, here’s a list of five things my Roomba has taught me:

1) Don’t give up easily. The path to your goal may not be an easy one, and may in fact require lots of false starts and turns, but if you persevere, you’ll get there.

2) When you get worn out or have finished your job, head home, take a breather, and recharge your batteries.

3) Avoid slippery or unsteady situations by planning ahead. There’s nothing worse than spinning your wheels and getting nowhere, and just wearing yourself out doing it.

4) If you’re going to charge forth to change the world, it’s not a bad idea to give a bit of warning to those close to you.

5) When you’re worn out, and just don’t have the energy to do the job right, don’t let people push your buttons. Let them know you need a small break to get your wind back.

Have any additional life lessons courtesy of a Roomba? Post them in the comments.

A couple of weeks ago an early Christmas present my wife and I were giving to ourselves arrived with our latest freight shipment from the U.S. - a brand new bouncing (not in the traditional sense) baby Roomba Scheduler.

For those who have been in a cave for the last year or two, Roomba is the trade name given to a family of robotic vacuum cleaners by iRobot, the company which developed and sells the Roomba products. The Roomba products work on battery, and operate by bouncing (gently) around a room and cleaning in a pattern designed to cover most of, if not all, of a room. They purportedly work great on carpets as well as hard surfaces (we have no carpets, so I cannot attest to that part - but it’s great on the tile floors we have).

Simply said, we are very happy with our new family addition. We have two dogs, a cat, two hamsters (not free roaming though), and a native Bonairean parakeet (called a “Prikichi"), plus two children and dust laden winds, so our floors get pretty gritty in no time - you can feel it on your feet (yes, even in December we walk around on bare feet - take that snow-draped New England!).

I’ve been using the Roomba to clean a room or two a day, and what a difference that makes, especially in contrast to the more time consuming and tedious manual sweeping we had been doing before. And I can now tell my wife I really am doing my share of house work.

The Roomba is smart enough (well, equipped with enought sensor technology anyhow) to not fall down stairs, which is a big plus, and one can create “virtual walls” which the Roomba will “bounce” off of so that you can limite the area in which it should focus its cleaning skills. Plus, it goes under beds and furniture providing there’s about 3 inches or so of clearance. And one of the coolest things is that when it thinks it’s done (or when it’s battery is running low), it finds its docking station and self-parks to charge its battery.

I must say I have been remiss in not even bothering with the scheduling functions of the Roomba, but I find that it’s easy for me to pick up wastebaskets, isolate a room, and pick up floor mats and towels and then just press a button on the Roomba to tell it to clean. Actually having to program it to clean at a particular time seems wasteful when I can just start it up manually and leave the immediate area (and yes, I am a geek, but I try to be practical)

The only things so far that the Roomba seems to have had problems with have been floor towels (e.g. in the bathrooms - it chokes on them and then bleets for help), floor mats (gets stuck on them - half on, half off - and spins in circles, and concrete dust (too fine for it to pick all of it up - haven’t found a vacuum cleaner yet that does, either).

I also have one piece of furniture which the Roomba has gotten wedged under - easily remedied by putting something solid in front of the furniture that the Roomba would bounce off of.

All in all, these are minor things - I am very pleased with the unit, and I have started recommending it to friends here on Bonaire as a great way to deal with dust, dirt, and pet hair/feathers.

I give my Roomba Scheduler a healthy 8.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale.

(As a footnote, iRobot has also recently started shipping the Scooba - a robotic wet mop. Definitely looking forward to checking that out at some point. If it’s anywhere as good as the Roomba I’ll be happy!)

I introduced a new series of artistic photographic images about a week ago. It’s the “Time For...” series, and it’s an open edition (meaning that it’s not a limited or numbered edition).

Take a look at the series and my motivation behind it in the Gallery section of my art web site.

A couple of the images from the new series are presented here - Time For Christmas I and Time for Dawn I, respectively:

Bonaire, the island I live on, is not a typically Caribbean island - it’s actually rather arid. Our primary native flora are cactii and other thorny plants. The terrain is more reminiscent of Arizona than the lush jungle one typically envisions in conjunction with “Caribbean Island”. We have no real big sandy beaches - it’s mostly iron shore or small bits of coralline rock here.

Part of the reason for the lack of “lush-ness” is the fact that our annual rainfall is only about 20-22 inches a year.

So, when rain falls (our rainy season is typically November and December, spreading outward into October or January on occasion), the parched soil does not absorb the water real well. Nor have the civil engineers who designed roads and other man-made structures taken rain much into account.

This is obvious by the 6-12 inch deep puddles on what we call major roadways here (ones that fit two car side by side with a margin for safety). And the puddles are everywhere after a rain shower.

Now, back in New England or Florida, when it rains, and there are puddles everywhere, what do folks do when driving through them? They make sure their windows are rolled up tight.

Not on Bonaire. This morning, for example, over half the vehicles passing by me heading in the opposite direction, while driving through these deep puddles, had at least their driver side window open. We drive on the “normal” side of the street here, so that puts their driver side window facing the center of the road.

Being trained to drive in New England, I find puddles a delight to drive through, and whenever possible do so at the highest speed I can. On Bonaire this produces rather unhappy results, particular when passing by someone with said open window.

But today, all those people who appear not to have a shred of self-preservation (at least with respect to puddle water) were saved by virtue of the slow vehicles in front of me. As for me, I make sure my windows are alway rolled up when hitting these puddles.

At E3 in May, the big hullabaloo about the Xbox 360 was whether it was going to be backward compatible with the Xbox. There was cheering at the E3 Xbox 360 pre-launch when Peter Moore of Microsoft announced that the Xbox 360 would in fact be able to play “leading” Xbox titles.

Now that the Xbox 360 is here, and the list of Xbox games it will play grows (and occasionally shrinks), does it really matter?

The reason I ask is that there’s no easy way to transfer saved game data between the Xbox and Xbox 360. So all the time and effort that I’ve invested in working my way through countless Xbox games is wasted on the Xbox 360, unless I want to redo all my hard labor on that platform. Heck, it’s just easier to keep my Xbox around and play that when I want, knowing that it is in fact 100% Xbox game compatible, than it is to bother playing Xbox games in my Xbox 360. This is one area where Sony got things right on the PS2 - it’s possible to use PSOne/PSX memory cards on the PS2. With the Xbox this is not viable, because the memory cards hold only 8MB, but one might have all sorts of downloaded (and paid for) level maps on the Xbox hard disk which consume a lot more than 8MB, so there’s no way to be portable without hacking the systems. And even then, it’s not clear that would work.

I would guess that where Xbox backward compatibility is important is to those who don’t own an Xbox in the first place, which I suspect rules out pretty much all current Xbox 360 owners, since fanatics and game jockeys are the most likely to have had the forethought or perseverance to have obtained an Xbox 360 at launch on November 22nd.

Time will tell if Microsoft’s backward compatibility effort bought them anything.

Last night we opted to dine out and try a newly opened restaurant here on Bonaire - it goes by the name Bambu and is owned and operated by Joyce, the proprietor of La Guernica, a one year old restaurant about a half mile north of this one.

With a name like Bambu we expected Asian or Asian Fusion fare, but instead found an eclectic blend of original continental fare and some variations on old favorites.

After being greeted with a bit of proscuitto wrapped melon as a welcome treat, my wife opted for the day’s menu, which consisted of a salad featuring warm apples and bacon wrapped goat cheese. The main course was rack of lamb in a yummy roasted garlic sauce with a haricort vert (thin green bean) bunch wrapped with bacon (and sauteed) and cheesy potatoes au gratin. Dessert was a chocolate brownie accompanies by a coffee and a home made chocolate bonbon (filled with a marzipan/coconut filling). Total price was NAF 57,50 (approximately US$32) for this menu. Everything on the menu was excellent (I was given samples of it all), even for someone like myself who does not particularly care for lamb or goat cheese.

My son opted to move straight over to dessert and had the lemon sorbet - two portions of it actually - one for his entree and another for dessert. He enjoyed it, and the small taste I stole was very good.

My daughter and I shared an appetizer of a duo of puff pastry - one filled with shrimp and the other with goat cheese. It was tasty - the goat cheese was mild, but the filo dough crisp. The shrimp filling was okay - more saucy than I expected.

For our entrees, my daughter had seafood fajitas as the bolletin of chicken and orange was sadly not available, while I had marinated tuna with salad from the appetizer part of the menu as my main course. The seafood fajitas were tasty and of decent size (and they made great leftovers too!), and the accompanying guacamole was excellent. Lacking was some sort of tomato salsa or pico de gallo, but in speaking with Joyce she promised to look into adding this to the presentation in the future.

My marinated tuna was marinated in olive oil, rosemary, dill, and perhaps a few other herbs I could not discern by taste. By itself the marinade was just there - but when eaten in conjunction with the so-called accompanying Caribbean salad, it was an excellent combination.

We ended the meal with desserts for all - the aforementioned chocolate brownie for my wife, the second helping of lemon sorbet for my sun, an orange creme brulee for me, and my daughter ended up with a berry laden coupe with vanilla ice cream. Again, all very delicious.

Portion size were just right in all cases - leaving us sated but not gorged. The presentation of all the dishes was artful and inspired - not something you usually see on Bonaire. And outside of the very minor nits I mentioned above, the flavor and taste of each dish was wonderful.

Total cost of the dinner, including several frozen fruit shakes for the kids, and a couple of Barcardi Lemon and Cokes for my wife and I, worked out to a bit over US$100 without tip, which is quite reasonable.

I give Bambu an 8.5 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale. Well worth a visit if you have the time when next visiting Bonaire.

Bambu is located at Kaya C.E.B. Hellmund 17, in the location of where the Mai-Mai restaurant used to be, just south of downtown Kralendijk along the oceanfront promenade towards the Divi Flamingo Resort. Phone +599-7 17-4167.