saulrosenbaum.com / daily

Your password is 38 characters long and has 859, 014, 407, 811, 853, 781, 595, 080, 219, 684, 582, 731, 884, 364, 012, 508, 413, 952 combinations.
It takes 3, 125, 076, 210, 605, 962, 047, 684, 734, 787, 925, 054, 595, 268, 608.00 hours or130, 211, 508, 775, 248, 412, 205, 926, 244, 885, 521, 676, 369, 920.00 days to crack your password on computer that tries 137, 438, 953, 472 passwords per hour. This is based on a typical PC processor in 2008 and that the processor is under 10% load.

Brute Force Calculator

It’s that point in the year when everything gets nuts, everyone needs everything NOW - or even better yesterday, As a general rule - I just hold on - try to keep my external client meetings to a minimum and go along for the ride. We’ll have to see how I fare - many sleepless nights ahead!

One of the things I miss by not work at an agency is working on the creative side of projects like the Phillips manalogue campaign, tremendous writing, excellent execution - just can’t beat excellent creative combined with a client that trusts an offbeat concept, looks like they spend some cash too.

Manalogues

For the past few weeks Trudiann and I have been celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary, we’ve been a number of places - San Francisco, Monterey, Carmel, Death Valley, and we’re wrapping up in Las Vegas - we love Vegas - it’s been our go-to spot for the last 10 years or so - we loosely planned a few events, bought some show tickets, and made some reservations at some notable eateries.

Yesterday we had lunch at Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill, we’d been there for dinner in the past - and we always enjoy it - the menu is a festival of powerful and potent southwest flavor combinations - Mesa’s pricing is affordable and the service is attentive but not pushy - for us it’s a no-brainer.

As our post Elvis wedding dinner we went to Craft Steakhouse. Honestly, words almost escape me as to the quality of this meal, the Craft menu is an Ala-carte menu featuring the finest beefs (Japanese Waygu Beef, Australian & American Kobe Beef), seasonal vegetables, and exotic mushrooms - I should note I’m not a fan of ala-carte menu’s because I like the chef to pair my entree’s with vegetables to their palettes - I discover new tastes in the process - lucky for me Trudiann suggested we order the chef’s ‘Surf & Turf’ tasting menu and get a taste of all that Craft had to offer. What a great suggestion; the chef started us off with 

• Kobe Beef Tartare
• Romaine Hearts “Caesar” (with pickled anchovies)
• Hawaiian Prawns 

I should qualify this by saying up until VERY recently Trudiann hasn’t been what I would call an adventurous eater, tartare and caesar salad both fall well outside of her comfort zone. 

All three starters where amazing - the tartare (with quail egg) was perfectly balanced, the texture was smooth and the portion was more than enough to thoroughly enjoy this rare treat (excellent pun if I must say) - the caesar  was really nice, the perfectly minimal dressing clung to the leaves which were crisp and tasty - the pickled anchovy garnish was a nice twist on the little fish and made the whole dish a bit special. the prawns - tasty glazed grilled goodness, Trudiann loves prawns and we thoroughly enjoyed these.

Next the chef sent out the entrees & sides- 

• NY Strip Steak
• Kobe Skirt Steak
• Lobster in butter and Tarragon
• Asparagus with Rosemary
• Whipped Potato’s with Chives
• A selection of 5 japanese mushrooms including, Hen of the Woods and Shiitake

Now if that sounds like a lot of food,, you’d be right, Craft isn’t the kind of place that skimps on food - at this point we still had a rather sizable bowl of Kobe Beef Tartare on the table - because I just wasn’t ready to give it up yet. The Entrees in a word SPECTACULAR, each with a simple preparation, let the high quality of the ingredients shine - the Skirt Steak was our favorite, it was juicy, flavorful and perfectly medium rare- I wouldn’t be exaggerating when I say the best piece of steak I’ve ever eaten. The Strip was also delicious, but our fondness for the other cut was obvious - as we finished that one first. The lobster was interesting, as it’s a dish we never have, and we where both amazed at the varied texture of the claw meat, and the buttery goodness of the lobster tail. The whipped potato’s where amazing - I hope to never find out exactly how much cream and butter were in there, needless to say they were a rich and tasty companion to the steak and lobster.

Of course what’s dinner without dessert? The pastry chef sent out an assortment of tasty things

• Brioche bread pudding
• MonkeyBread w/ Caramel ice cream (and ‘happy 20th anniversary written in caramel on the plate’)
• Raspberry Sorbet 
• Mint Ice Cream
• Fresh Fruit
• Petit Fours

I’m hard pressed to say what was best - but I will say that the mint ice cream was the best Ice cream I’ve ever had in my entire life - Trudiann also really like the mint ice cream and the MonkeyBread, I also finished the bread pudding, because I’m a sucker for bread pudding - it was as good as you would expect.

Overall we enjoyed everything - we must have, we finished most everything.

Service was top-notch, attentive, friendly and informative, the decor was understated and classy - pricing, well, good food costs money - and the food at Craft Steakhouse is excellent - I will happily return to Craft Steakhouse on my next Vegas jaunt.

Mesa Grill Website (Ceasars Palace)

Craft SteakHouse (MGM Grand)

I really like TV, it’s often simultaneously entertaining, informative and appalling, what’s not to love? But here we find ourselves on the precipice of 2010 - and aside from the advent of American Idolesque programming U.S. TV hasn’t changed since it’s inception - advertisers buy time to peddle their wares - how much they spend is based on viewership and demographic data of a show or block of shows - of course there is no guarantee people will but an advertisers product - but they’re playing a numbers game - casting the largest possible net by advertising on the most popular shows. It’s all very logical, and old-school.

Let’s think a bit differently, what if there was a way to guarantee ad viewership and potentially sales, while increasing the quality and availability of top notch entertainment? I enjoy ‘Project Runway’ (seriously) I’d be willing to watch a 10 minutes Tressimé infomercial and provide some type of feedback (internet, phone etc.) in realtime in exchange for commercial-free on-demand viewing of Heidi and Tim, now think about that - No more weekly shows, no more seasons, no-more reruns - unless of course you want to watch it again - a constant stream of first-run, always ready when you are entertainment at your fingers. I know what you’re saying, Saul, that’s just not possible, I’ll cut you off, it’s already is - via bit torrent.

Imagine you didn’t watch TV for a year, then you downloaded everything produced in that year, you’d have a massive catalog to view from - TV studios can do exactly the same thing, it requires big changes - but if the ‘cost’ for Project Runway was me completing a shampoo purchase, I would do it - advertisers would be happy - because their profits would be directly related to the popularity of a given show, TV studios would be happy because competition to advertise would be high, Viewers would be happy because not only would their always be something worth watching, we’d be essentially watching it commercial free.

Obviously this idea is rough, flawed, and pretty unlikely… but that doesn’t mean their isn’t a seed of a good idea in there somewhere.

Usually by 4 o’clock every afternoon I’m fairly certain that everyone in the free world is taking fifteen minutes to either email me or call me on the phone - seriously, it’s cricket quiet in my studio till 4ish most days, but busybusybusy from 4 to 6pm - In the last year or so I’ve started planning my day around the phenomenon - which I’ve named ‘saul-bombing’ - the challenge of surviving a ‘saul-bombing’ is how quickly you can sort, and flag the stuff that actually must get done overnight from the stuff that although it looks important - actually doesn’t require any action on my part. My usual approach is to quickly flag the do’sand take note of and then archive the not-do’s. I then take the flagged items and fold them into my list of work to be done - hopefully without causing a epic ripple that fills my week with late nights - it takes some resolve to watch your week deteriorate before your very eyes, but with a few simple goals - you can at least make the process mentally easier.

• Don’t leave any unflagged email in your inbox, get the info out, get the email archived, if you’re ballsy you could delete it, I’m not, I’ve never regretted having 10 years of emails to refer back to.
• Don’t go to bed without figuring out your hit-list for tomorrow, you’ll sleep better.
• If it isn’t an emergency, no all-nighters, they seem like a good idea at the time, but in the long run your taking longer to accomplish less work.
• In the morning avoid your email, and all social networking (twitter, facebook, etc) till you knock a few items off your list, that will help minimize the ripple caused by tomorrows ‘saul-bombing’.

Tagged: email

I enjoy magic, hmm, let me be more specific, I enjoy sleight of hand, I don’t enjoy the new kind of magic where David Blaine starves himself for 31 days and calls it an illusion, or Criss Angel swallows radioactive waste and calls it a ‘mind-freak’, I like the kind of magic where a skilled and practice individual produces deck after deck of cards from thin air 3 inches from your face, while you stare yourself cross-eyed trying to figure it out - truth be told I never want to know how it’s done.

When I saw that this weeks Illustration Friday word was Poof!, I couldn’t help myself - I illustrated the first trick I ever learned, a store bought illusion where you produce a card from thin air and then you vanish it by having it engulf itself in flames, it was a neat trick and I hurt myself EVERY TIME I DID IT, but the trick impressed the girl I was interested in at the time, so I look at it as $45 well spent.

I’ve been fooling with some styles that are a bit quicker start to finish than my normal rendered approach, I really like this segmented approach, it’s fun to do, and I like the results, but I absolutely want to explore it further.

Tagged: illustration friday

This week I stopped at the farmers market and bought a bag of fresh ginger (7 hands) it’s probably more ginger than I’ve consumed in my entire life - It’ll keep for a few weeks in the veggie crisper - but I’m going to put the bulk of it to good use in the form of gingersnaps, they’re dead simple to make:

• 3/4 cup butter flavored Crisco
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup mosasses
• 1 egg
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 cup flour
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

1. Melt shortening in a 3-4 quart saucepan over LOW heat
2. Remove from heat, let cool.
3. Add sugar, molasses and egg, beat well
4. Sift together flour, soda, cloves, ginger, cinnimon and salt.
5. Add to first mixture, mix well and chill.
6. Form into 1 inch balls, roll in granulated sugar and place on a greased cookie sheet 2 inches apart.
7. Bake at 375 for 8-10 minutes.
8. Let Cool, eat and enjoy!

I’ll probably iced some of them with a lemony sugar glaze, you’ll have to figure out your own icing - hmm, maybe chocolate would be good. Be creative, have fun, don’t eat them all in one sitting!

Mothers Day was months ago, but that doesn’t mean you can’t buy your mom a totally typographic tee Shirt one in a series of typographic shirts - this one is mostly just because the image of your mom walking down the street wearing this shirt amuses me.

Tagged: merch

I have two TIVO’s, one upstairs, one downstairs - I can easily move recorded shows between the two (pull, not push) - and recently I’ve discovered how easy it is to move recorded shows to my mac, so I can watch it while I pound away at work. I know there are lots of ways of doing this - and that’s fine - but hardly qualifies as FUN, my way requires a browser.

1. I’m assuming your TIVO is on your network, if it’s not it should be.
2. First login to your TIVO account on tivo.com and make sure you’ve allowed media transfers - and grab your ‘media access key’ while you’re there.
3. Open any browser and key in your TIVO’s IP address - mine is https://192.168.55.12 - note that you’re doing this under a secure connection ‘https’.
4. When challenged - your username is ‘tivo’ and your password is your media access key

Bam!, you should now be looking at a web interface that show you all your recorded shows - complete with links to download shows to your desktop. The files themselves are in ‘.tivo’ format - which is essentially a MPEG2 variant - playing it has it’s own challenges, it’s one of the few formats that VLC doesn’t play out-of-the-box, I’m sure there’s an easier way buy I toss them into VisualHub, and that seems to work nicely.

Of course the hidden gem in this is that although the files are pretty big (1GB+) if I opened up my router JUST right - my friends could access my TIVO’d content - and vice versa, just a thought - would seem to be a very sketchy use for VPN software too - but that remains to be seen, for right now it’s a curious example of poking at an local network IP while on the phone - which is exactly how I found this.

I’m whipping up a geektoolscript to keep me posted as to what’s ‘playing’ on my tivo, because I can, and because that’s the way I roll.

There are plenty of apps that will let you do this - most notably TivoButler, and Roxio’s TIVO Transfer (which is really excellent).