WombatNation

Just ran across Summize while catching up on the Lifehacker syndication feed. The main feature Summize provides is an aggregation of reviews of books, movies, videos and other products from blogs and ecommerce sites like Amazon. But the site is much deeper than that.

Recently Amazon started showing the breakdown of the absolute counts for each level of a 1 to 5 star product rating. This sometimes provides far more insight than you get from a single averaged value, especially when there are just a few reviews. Summize provides a similar breakdown via a color bar (red = terrible, green = great). When there are a small total number of reviews for a product, just a few poor ratings can have a significant effect on the overall rating. If you then look at the actual reviews, you might discover that the highly negative reviewers bought the wrong product and are mad, hated a feature you don’t care about, or are simply stupid. Same goes for reviewers giving very high reviews because they love a feature you could care less about.

Summize also provides a list of links to related items. For example, last night I watched MirrorMask, which was written by one of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman. Searching for MirrorMask brought up reviews of not just the movie, but also the illustrated film script, a book on the making of the movie, the soundtrack and more. Only one item was unrelated to the movie.

Links to other topics are also provided. For MirrorMask, links were provided to pages for Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, as well as to some of the actors.

Although Amazon and many other sites conveniently provide ratings on a 1 to 5 scale or on a different scale that can be easily scaled to 1 to 5, obviously most bloggers don’t provide numerical ratings in an easily retrievable format. It appears that Summize has developed an algorithm for parsing the text of the review and using sentiments expressed in the review (fantastic, sucked, godlike) to convert the review to a 1 to 5 rating. I’m assuming they are doing more than looking for adjectives to which they have assigned values, but, hey, even that might work pretty well in aggregate.

So, how do they make money? Product links on Amazon, for starters.

Obviously, they are pulling in a lot of data and have one some interesting stuff with it. I recommend digging around on the site on the trends page and elsewhere to see what they have done with the data so far.

The New York Times ran a good article by Patricia Cohen on rats in cars with the headline “Under the Hood, a Cozy Rat Retreat“. The article mentions someone who had a problem with rats chewing on the knock-sensor wire on his Honda Accord.

Looking on the Web, he found other Honda owners complaining about rats nesting in their knock-sensor systems.

Hmmmm, where do you think that location on the web might be? I’m sure there are other websites describing this problem, but I would be surprised if any of them have as many independent confirmations as on that blog post on my site.

Banned since 1912, absinthe made a triumphant return to legality recently in the US. Absinthe has an undeserved reputation for causing hallucinations, dementia, renal failure, convulsions, homicidal mania, ear-ectomies (see van Gogh, Vincent), and a nasty aftertaste of black licorice. Okay, the last one is true. Think Good n Plenties and anise blended with Ouzo and Sambuca.

Wormwood is used in the production of absinthe. The chemical compound thujone is a dangerous component of wormword, but the amount that ends up in a glass of absinthe is so small as to be harmless.

St. George Spirits of Alameda, an Alameda distiller best known for their Hangar One Vodka, is now producing absinthe and began selling bottles to the public today. Although three other companies can legally sell absinthe in the US, St. George is the only US company currently producing and selling absinthe.

I went to the Forbidden Island Tiki Lounge in Alameda after work with a couple of friends tonight and Rob and Eric both partook of an $18 glass of absinthe. The glass of absinthe is served along with a glass of ice water with straws. You take up a little water into the straws and slowly add it to the absinthe in a process called “louching”. A cloudy layer forms at the bottom and rises as more water is added. The pictures aren’t too great because the lighting at the Tiki Lounge isn’t designed for photo shoots and my cameraphone ain’t so great.

Just a little water had been added in this first photo. Trust me when I say the liquid was green. And smelly, in a licorice sort of way. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, unless you find it appalling, like I do.

Once the blended level reaches the top, it’s ready to drink. Another preparation ritual involves dripping the water over a sugarcube, although they frown on that at the Tiki Lounge. Eric thoroughly enjoyed his absinthe, while Rob was just happy to say that he had done it.

All of the absinthe consumption may or may not have led to the frenzied construction of a miniature umbrella sculpture. Degas, van Gogh, Picasso, Verlaine and Hemingway would surely have been proud of our absinthe-fueled creativity.

I went to a friend’s birthday party this weekend (Hi, Eric!) at which he roasted a seventy pound pig. He and a friend built a big fire during the night that they let burn down to hot coals. The pig was wrapped in banana leaves and stuffed with river rocks that had been heated by the fire. The pig was then wrapped in canvas and buried with the coals at around 6 am. At least, I think that’s how it went down. The pig in the blanket was also resting on some chicken wire so he/she could be easily retrieved. Finally, they built another fire on top of the buried pig and roasted foil wrapped potatoes.

After the pig was hoisted from his secret hideout, they rolled him back and forth to shake the ashes off the canvas. Then it was up onto the table for the dissection.

As the canvas was rolled back and the banana leaves peeled away, the rich smell of roasted pig and rosemary poured out. Then it was time to extract the meat from the skin and the bones. Nearly twelve hours of roasting at a relatively low temperature made for moist, flavorful pork.

The KALX double 7″ arrived this week. The two records are colored vinyl, one blue and one red. The sleeve and label art by Chris Hall is fantastic. The record release got great coverage on Pitchfork and other sites.

The recordings on the two discs are:

• Talking Heads – “Stay Hungry” (recorded 4/18/1978 at Lower Sproul Plaza, UC Berkeley)
• Mark Gardener (from the band Ride) – “Vapour Trail” (recorded 3/28/2003 at KALX Studios)
• Dengue Fever – “Shave Your Beard” (recorded 10/06/2005 at KALX Studios)
• Supersystem – “Defcon” (recorded 5/12/2005 at KALX Studios)