Fourth trip to Ko, second in the new venue. Still fun, still good. Wine pairings were excellent, and presentation and explanation of same were also excellent. With tip dinner for 2 with pairings about $1k. No more soft boiled, or soft scrambled, egg. Foie gras is same ingredients, but now comes in the form of a hand held tartlet that kind of falls apart when you bit into it, so you need to mop up the shavings with your fingers.
Modern Home Audio & Video – Roon and Plex
I am in the process of updating our home audio and video distribution and am of the opinion that Roon is the way to go with music, and Plex is the way to go with video. You could go with a whole-home system like Crestron or Control4, but Roon and Plex are more focused applications with deeper functionality, and they play nice with each other and with hardware most people already have.
Roon is a great way to explore and send music around the home, including sending high resolution music to high quality endpoints. Probably best from a large touchscreen computer, but also great using an iPad to control. I have the server running on a small hackintosh with files sitting on NAS. I am re-ripping a few CDs to replace lossy files with lossless ones now using dBpoweramp, which is the way to go, good for meta data and lets you check accuracy of rips. I maintain an iTunes library on an old Mac Pro, and sync the library out to the NAS every once in awhile. Roon also includes integration of our TIDAL account. I have written more on Roon in another post, for serious listening I am using a Meridian endpoint with Meridian DSP speakers.
Plex seems like a great way to browse and distribute video content, and I recently set up a hackintosh Plex server with 24TB (4x6TB WD Reds) of storage in RAID0, and another 24TB (3x8TB Seagate archiving HDs) of storage for a backup. I use RipIt to move DVDs to the hard drive, and then Handbrake to create m4v files for Plex. In the rare case where there is a problem with Handbrake I use MakeMKV to create mkv files, which Handbrake can then transcode to m4v. I also use MakeMKV to create mkv files from BluRay discs, and then Handbrake to create reasonably sized m4v files. I am tossing all of my DVDs and keeping the RipIt generated copies on the Plex server. BluRays for now I am keeping the discs, mkv files are just a little too big. For things I have purchased on iTunes, I use Tune4Mac iTunes Video Converter Platinum to strip off DRM and put copies in the Plex library. I use Plex Home Theater (running on my Roon server) to send video to the main screen in the house (75 inch Samsung) with audio going to the Meridian system (Plex Home Theater interface is not so great, I find it is easier to control it remotely using the Plex app on an iPad). The Plex server can also be accessed using tablets, and unlike Roon server can even be accessed outside the home, transcoding to deal with the more limited bandwidth for that. Very slick. I used to think it would be nice to have a Kaleidescape system, but now I think Plex is better and at a small fraction of the cost (PRIMA Cinema is still pretty cool for stuff in theaters, but crazy expensive, more for people who have to worry about Paparazzi). I went overboard with my Plex server, it is an i7 4790 with 32GB of memory, and as I described already, a lot of storage. Pic below.
Roon, Meridian, and High-End Distributed Audio
Long time Meridian fanboy and owner here, I think their DSP speakers sound great and the preservation of the digital path until the last possible moment appeals to my inner nerd. Our gear is getting a bit old but still sounds great, a 568.2MM with DSP5500 mains, a DSP5000C, and DSP33 rears. For distributed audio we were early Sonos adopters and have five additional zones in our home, and use the Sonos to feed the Meridian system with lossless files on a NAS and also Tidal hi-res streaming. Works pretty well, though multiple remotes are involved, a MSR and an iPad. The Sonos zones are decent quality ceiling speakers, for non-critical/casual listening.
My wife and I are in the process of having a new home designed which we will then have built, so I have been doing some thinking about how we will handle audio in the new home. Which home will be a bit smaller so maybe fewer audio zones, so thinking to have higher quality speakers and more tightly integrated systems would be nice.
I think the reason we went Sonos instead of Sooloos was mainly that I don’t much care for expensive proprietary boxes that are little more than cheap computers, albeit with some good software. Sonos might have had the UI going a little bit earlier too.
Meridian ditching the proprietary Sooloos boxes, allowing the core to run on a QNAP, got me more excited about doing Meridian DSP in-walls for a few zones in the new home, so I got a MS200 to be able to play with that for a bit now. But Meridian has been slow to deliver on the QNAP core (though I saw it running in their NYC office a couple of months ago), and then I stumbled on Roon, developed by the Sooloos people, ready for prime time, not tied to any particular hardware, but plays nice with Meridian, I was sold. I didn’t even bother with the trial, I plonked down for a lifetime subscription.
I hooked the MS200 up to our 568 with a Reviver, loaded Roon server up on a quad-core i7 hackintosh we use as a HTPC, and it was pretty much off to the races, we have the server watching the music on the NAS and our Tidal account is linked up. The 568 does not power on/off with the Roon app, but volume control working fine. My wife and I are still getting used to the Roon app (actually we are still getting used to the Tidal app too), but my sense is that this is what we will be using in our new home, probably moving the server to a large touchscreen PC, seems like people are using Lenovos or HPs, 27″ might be a little big for living area, I am thinking a 24″.
Momofuku Ko 2.0
Another trip to Momofuku Ko last Saturday evening, this our first in the new space at 8 Extra Place, it was end of their second week. Still a great place, and was fun having David Chang there, he was not cooking but was taking it all in, maybe looking for things to tweak, and he stopped by to chat with us a couple of times. Despite the ad on TV he is apparently not driving an Audi.
Menu had some old stuff and some new stuff. Our favorites the red snapper and celery root agnolotti. Least favorite maybe the venison. They changed up the soft cooked egg with caviar, serving it as a soft scramble and with the potato chips crumbled up too. I know that change is a steamroller and you are on it or are part of the road, but I think we like the original version more, better textures and I like picking up the little fingerling potato chips. Menu and pairings in the link below.
New space is neat and the crew seem to be enjoying it. We’ll continue to be repeat customers.
Momofuku Ko Redux
Second trip to Momofuku Ko last weekend, this time for dinner. A more comfortable amount of food vs lunch, and still a very fun and tasty meal. My favorite maybe the tai snapper, and I enjoyed the foie gras more than last time, as last time I was pretty stuffed by the time we got to that course. Sean Gray wasn’t there, but Josh Pinsky was, and Eli (didn’t get his last name) was mostly working in front of us and was very friendly. Sounds like move to new/larger location has been in the works for quite awhile, and might happen in the next week or two.
They give you a printout of the meal/drinks at the end now, here is what we had:
SIP/VoIP For Home, Callcentric and Panasonic KX-TGP500
I have put a couple of businesses on, and for work am currently using, SIP phones with OnSIP hosting services, which for the most part works great. Very reasonable, and the flexibility is nice, the ability to use multiple phones, smart phones, and soft phones. Recently I decided to go over to SIP phones at home too, pulling the plug on the “triple-play” line and a Vonage line, both also VoIP, via analog phones and thus handcuffed to the phone wiring in the house, amongst other things.
OnSIP does not really offer anything that makes sense for home use, you used to be able to have a totally a la carte account, but now I think you have to have a plan. So I poked around and settled on Callcentric, and ported the Vonage and triple play numbers over. Initially I went with snom m9r DECT phones, but my wife didn’t like them because they are pretty small, small buttons, hard to read, etc. We had Panasonic wireless phones before, so to get her with the program I then went with the Panasonic KX-TGP500 and an extra KX-TPA50 handset. Form factor of the phones is similar to their wireless phones that work with an analog phone line. Setup of these phones with Callcentric was not completely straight forward, so this note. By the way, the Callcentric support is pretty good. You support a ticket and in short order you have a reply, and you can go back and forth several times in an hour or two and they got me sorted out (they did not have experience with Panasonic phones, but told me there were users with the same phone, and were happy for me to send them screen shots of configuration screens to get things going).
The Panasonic documentation, on the other hand, is fairly lame. I think there was a Quick Guide, a User Manual, and an Administrator Manual, the latter two running into the hundreds of pages. I did manage to find how to access the web portal once the base unit is connected to the Internet. I used IP Scanner to find the base unit, but if you put the IP address into your browser nothing happens. Not like other SIP phones (Polycom, Cisco, snom, at least). You actually have to enable the web user interface, which you do from a handset by pressing the menu button, and then #534, and turning on “EmbeddedWeb.” That is intuitive (not). The default username and password for the base unit are admin and adminpass respectively (that is somewhere in the manuals too, maybe).
Here are the SIP settings to get the phone registered with Callcentric:
And here are the VoIP settings:
Restart the phone (Maintenance tab), and you will get this:
I should probably do another post on Callcentric, but like I said, their support is good, don’t be scared to ask them questions. The gotcha for me was trying to have multiple devices registered with an Extension, which was a carryover from the User based OnSIP administration. Callcentric is extension-based, one device per extension.
Weber Genesis S-310 (2008/2009) Repair
Flavorizer bars and burners on our old Weber S-310 (3 years old?) were completely corroded through, new one was $850 or so, so I decided to replace the flavorizer bars and the burners to delay a new grill purchase for a few more years. I didn’t take a picture of the old flavorizer bars, but here is a picture of the old burner tubes:
The old S-310 has the burner knobs on the right side table (the new model has them on the front), so you need to make sure you get the right parts. I got the wrong ones from Amazon, sent them back, and got the right ones here. The flavorizer bars need to be 24 inches, and then you need the right burner tubes.
Replacing the flavorizer bars is dead simple. The burner tubes are also simple, but there are some tricks.
To replace the burner tubes I think Weber assumes you will remove the manifold assembly (they even include two replacement bolts for same). If your grill is anything like ours, it is impossible to remove the original bolts without damaging other things, hacksaws and drills will be involved. Here is a picture of the offending bolts (with new burner tubes already installed):
Instead of taking those two bolts out, go to the other end of the burner tubes and twist them off the screws holding them in place. Then you can easily get vice grips on those screws (I used some liquid wrench to play it safe), take them out, and you should be able to reuse them with the new burner tubes. Without these “set” screws there is enough play in the burner tubes to remove them from the manifold and slide them out of the grill. Here are the new tubes in place, before reinstalling the set screws:
KitchenAid Upper Rack Roller Repair
Our KitchenAid dishwasher (ours is a KUDS30IXSS4, but I think this applies to any KitchenAid with an adjustable top rack) is just over one year old and the rollers on the upper rack are already broken, which causes the rack to come off the rails. The plastic tabs holding the rollers on break:
I couldn’t find a DIY on this and was nervous about breaking more cheap plastic bits while making the repair, so here you go. Rollers are part of the rack adjuster assembly, link is to Amazon which seemed to have one of the cheapest prices. Even if only one of them is broken probably not a bad idea to just do both of them, as this is likely a cheap plastic temperature cycling issue and when one goes they are probably all on the verge of going.
Taking the rack out is easy, just flip the little retaining clips at the end of the rails to the open position.
The three lower clips holding the roller assembly to the rack are easy to remove. The outer ones just slide to where a cutout releases the assembly (pop the long slider one off the rack).
The middle clip is removed by squeezing the tabs together, you can do it with your fingers, or gently with a screwdriver (if you are going to break something this might be it).
The adjusting gizmo has a door with two tabs on the top and a couple of pins on the bottom. Pry the pins clear of the body with a screwdriver, then slide the door down and off.
Putting it back together is the opposite and easy. I don’t think you can goof up on this, but the thinner arm of the blue springgy thing needs to fit into the roller assembly, not sit on top of it.
Poor design/cheap materials. If I were a competitor I would jump on this. Appliances should not break after 14 months.
Momofuku Ko
We went to Ko for lunch a little over a week ago, perused some of the reviews and comments out there on the Internet before going and have a couple of things to add/update.
Our reservation was the fourth one, I think, and we were a little early. First six people were already there and crew was preparing things for them as a group. I think they generally try to serve two groups of six, otherwise managing the flow would just be too confusing. We went for wine pairings, which are $95 for both the lunch and dinner menus (this info is not on the website). We had the end seats, which I thought were good for watching the food prep, and we had a nice time, food was great, and the chefs and crew were friendly. I’d go again, but maybe for the dinner menu, for us lunch was just too much and despite skipping breakfast we just ran out of gas by the last few dishes. Here’s our best shot at remembering what we had:
- Oyster with strawberry slice in fruity juice
- Panna cotta with blueberry and a little leaf
- White gazpacho with chili oil on top (maybe served with #2, yumm, and I think I might be missing an amuse-bouche here
- Mackerel w/ watermelon and beans
- Scallop w/ onions and rice
- Hamachi in a yummy sauce
- Uni custard w/ rhubarb (maybe first time I have had uni, I don’t much care for seaweed so I skip this when having sushi, I thought this was OK, but not amazing)
- Octopus potato salad (fun watching them bring out and grill a largish octopus leg)
- Smoked trout w/ crispy skin, turnips, and gelatin (yumm, my wife doesn’t like smoked foods, but she liked this, though she did give me her skin)
- Lamb crudo w/ horseradish sauce and oatmeal chips (yumm)
- Puffed egg with bacon bits (neat dish, airy blob of egg)
- Eggplant tortellini w/ tomato compote
- Boxless bento box, chicken finger, popover (crispy, yumm), salad, and chili soup
- Lobster tail w/ yummy lobster foam (started to get full here)
- Sirloin roast w/ potatoes (maybe a 3 lb roast out and being prepared for awhile, they kept poking it with a skewer, I assume to test doneness, not sure how that works with a skewer, meat was pretty lean and a largish piece served, I are maybe half, I didn’t think the meat was so great, but then maybe that was colored by fact that I was getting pretty full)
- Shaved foie gras w/ lychee
- Pana cotta ice cream w/ donut
- Green ice cream w/ other sorbet stuff & stuff (yumm)
- Rice ice cream cone
Had been awhile since we did something like this. A little pricey, but worth it I think, food is delicious/creative, and it is fun to basically be sitting in the kitchen.
And I got a kick out of a wood pig that was on a shelf over the kitchen, it had the various sections drawn on it with dotted lines, head, back, hind quarter, front quarter all labeled “delicious,” and the belly labeled “fucking delicious.”
Schlumberger Training Video – Goddam Schlumberger
Here’s another one. This one a training video. Pretty funny!