I’ve been experimenting lately with cheese and beer pairings. I’m obviously a little bit biased, but I think the diversity of beer makes it a fantastic compliment to cheese. It’s not a new thing, but especially in America, which has taken the wine and cheese pairing route, it’s a bit of a niche. Which leaves lots of room for exploration which in turn leaves lots of room for exploration.

For this particular round I took 3 different beers and 3 different cheeses. The picture has 4 beers, but we didn’t get to the IPA. Kind of a bummer because IPAs make for some really interesting beer pairing, but alas, some beer has to be saved for later. Our beers were:

• Lagunitas Dopple Weizen – A surprisingly crisp and tangy beer. They use yeast from Bavaria which I think gives the beer a really interesting flavor that mixes nicely with the crisp malt profile of the Dopple. Still retains a lot of the wheat character of the beer making it a mix of flavors that opened up a lot o cheese possibilities.

• Full Sail Sanctuary 2011 – This beer deserves a year or two of conditioning in the bottle, but desperate times and all that. A great example of the dubbel style; bready, carmely malt goodness mixed with the banana, spicy belgian yeast. Slight hops to round out the beer, but basically a very drinkable Dubbel all around.
• Alaskan Perseverance Ale – I can’t get enough of this beer. It’s a typical stout but brewed with birch syrup and fireweed honey. Both give the beer a very bitter sweetness which is a great compliment to the standard stout. It adds just a slight bit of extra to it that makes it stand out and makes it a very complex and fun to drink beer. It’s a 25th anniversary beer so grab some while you can.

Now, on to the cheeses:

• Cypress Grove Chevre Truffle Tremor – Tangy, truffle goodness. Has a very sour, almost yeasty flavor to it. It’s an aged goat cheese, so the texture plays games with the beer a bit, but the truffle flavor makes it a unique pairing.
• Willamette Valley Farmstead Gouda – I find Gouda to be a great beer pairing cheese. It’s got a creamy, nutty flavor that mixes really well with a lot of the more Belgian beers ends up bringing out some great flavors. This is an excellent (and Northwest local) Gouda to be the pairee.
• Sartori Romano (grated) – Tangy, earthy, nutty with a nice finish. I find the italian hard cheeses kind of tough to do pairings with, but we had this for another part of the meal, so I gave it a shot. Not a major success, but no cheese is bad.

On to the pairings!

Lagunitas Bavarian Style Dopple-Weizen

The best pairing on the Lagunitas was with the Gouda. The earthy flavors of the Gouda really highlighted the estery parts of the Bavarian yeast in the Lagunitas. Taking a bite of the Gouda and a sip of the Lagunitas together was almost like an entirely new beer. The wheat and yeast flavors were enhanced and it really complimented the sour, tang of the beer. Probably my favorite pairing of the night. The Chevre didn’t really add a ton to this beer. Both were good but there wasn’t the interplay of flavors that I got with the Gouda. It was the same with the Romano. The two definitely worked together, especially the more nutty parts of the Romano, but it didnt’ quite dance in the same way as the Lagunitas and the Gouda did.

Full Sail Sanctuary 2011

The Full Sail and the Gouda actually weren’t as great a pairing as I was hoping. The flavors generally worked together, and some of the earthy notes of the Gouda played off the bready malts of the Full Sail but I was kind of disappointed with the overall result. The Truffle on the other hand, was much more interesting. The earthy, musky flavors of the truffle really did great things to the Full Sail. I think that the banana/spice notes in the Dubbel brought made a great contrast to the earthy, almost bitter parts of the Chevre. It’s kind of like the Truffle added some distinct bitterness that might usually come from hops in another style of beer, but in a way that was completely complimentary to the Full Sail. Great stuff. The Romano was a bit of a dud. Again, not a bad combination, just not one that had a ton of impact on the beer.

Alaskan Perserverance Ale

By far the hardest beer of the night to pair was the Perseverance. I find stouts hard enough to pair with cheeses, but with birch syrup and the just-off-center sweetness makes it even tougher. The Truffle stood up pretty well here. The truffell flavors didn’t exactly compliment the birch syrup sweetness, but it was kind of an interesting juxtaposition. The combination of that very tart aftertaste with the lingering bitter sweetness tickles the tongue a bit. Sadly, the Gouda didn’t stand much of a chance. It’s flavors just got overwhelmed by the beer. The salty/creamy parts of the Gouda were great, but in order to stand up to a big beer like a Stout, you have to have it in spades. Some Beecher’s Flagship might have been really interesting here. By this time we were out of Romano. It might have held up okay, but I have reservations. The Perseverance is a beer that stands on its own in a big way, so a cheese pairing is tough.

The winner was the Lagunitas and the Gouda. Just a really great mingling of flavors and a fantastic compliment. Second was actually the Truffle and the Perseverance. Maybe because I was three big beers in at that point, but the Truffle with it’s very tangy and creamy texture kind of held its own against the chocolate and bitterly sweet onslaught of the Perseverance. Surprising but tasty.

My desire to learn PhoneGap (and by extension get a lot better at HTML/JS) comes from two places. One, if you aren’t learning new technology, you’re not adapting as a developer. Two, as I’ve been looking around and trying to get my head around PhoneGap/HTML, I’ve found some rougher edges. Since I work at a tools company, I want to know where those edges are so that as Adobe builds out tools for this technology stack, I can provide good feedback to the product teams.

New Technology

I’ll say this a thousand times: I think AIR and Flex are the best way to build cross-platform mobile applications. I think they’re arguably the best way to build mobile apps in general for specific types of apps. And with AIR 3.0, AIR has never been more powerful. Stage3D is coming, we have native extensions and captive runtime so as a developer you can really blur the line between your AIR app and native functionality. But as great as I think native extensions are for our developer community, I’m not personally that excited by spending a lot of time writing them. I love the web. What got me so excited about RIAs back in the day was that you could build desktop-like apps with web technologies. I fully believe that Flash is part of the web, and I always will. Java and Objective C are decidedly not web technologies. And I’m not really that interested in spending a bunch of time learning Java/Objective C code. I don’t think that many AIR developers will have to roll their own native extensions, but it is one of the cool new parts of the platform, so a lot of the Adobe evangelists will be spending time getting up to speed on how to build them. That just doesn’t get me excited. Same goes for Stage3D. The stuff you can do with 3D in Flash Player is mind-blowing. I’m just not a 3D developer or a game developer. Luckily the Flash Platform is evolving beyond that as well. The stuff coming up with concurrency and potential enhancements to ActionScript both fall into what I’d call the “web world” and I’m excited to dive into those and get to know them as they get closer.

But, while I’m waiting, it turns out we now have a pretty cool HTML/JS mobile story with PhoneGap. I’ve been dabbling for a little while in jQuery mobile and HTML/JS and I’d consider myself an average JS developer. But you’ve always got to be learning, and if you love the web, you can’t not be good at JavaScript. I’m kind of ashamed that I’m not better, but this is a great opening for me to dive in, dedicate a ton of time and energy to getting better, and coming out a more holistic web developer. One of the things I love about the HTML/JS community is just how varied it is. There are JS developers of all stripes creating their own frameworks, own solutions to architecture problems, their own server solutions, and hell, even their own languages that eventually end up as JavaScript. The raw creativity of the web ecosystem is on full display when it comes to HTML/JS. And there is a certain zen to the chaos that I find intoxicating. I desperately want to be a part of that and the fact that I’m behind the curve is kind of depressing.

Helping Adobe

Which brings me to the second reason I’m planning to dedicate a ton of time to the PhoneGap stack. There are quite a few areas where the workflow is downright broken. My recent foray into on-device debugging is one example. Some of that is just that I don’t know enough, but there are also some real gaps in tooling, services, etc. We’ve got some smart people at Adobe who know the JS/HTML world pretty well. But we can always have more and if we want to provide value to developers in the space, that’s going to require knowing where the gaps are, knowing where to spend our time, and what kind of solutions will be helpful. I want to be able to provide that feedback and the best way to do that is to really know it. The hope is that I’ll be able to contribute in a small way to what Adobe will contribute to the open web ecosystem for developers.

Viva Flash!

So for me this particular foray goes beyond just learning PhoneGap to get up to speed. I think it’s a really cool time to be an Adobe evangelist and I came away from MAX a lot more invigorated than I’ve felt in a long time. Part of that is the Flash side (this session on the roadmap was excellent). But a big part of that was definitely that I think Adobe is going to make a positive impact in the HTML/JS space. The Nitobi guys are all insanely talented and I think that with them we’ve got a vision for mobile apps rooted in web technologies. I’m ready to contribute to that vision.

Update: And Ray pointed out he’s got a ton of stuff up as well.

Also, some of the Photoshop team members shared their thoughts on Steve Jobs over on the Photoshop blog.

An incredible visionary who changed the world with his passion and enthusiasm. RIP Steve Jobs.

As an evangelist, obviously a lot of what we do is presenting. I always wish I could make my presentations more interesting and more of a show so I’m always watching how other people present. A great example is Cirque Du Soleil, which came through Seattle as part of their Kooza show. At a basic level, the Cirque Du Soleil presentation isn’t too different from any other presentation. A lot flashier, a lot more badass, but still a basic presentation. As I was watching I noticed a few things that I wanted to jot down and (hopefully) incorporate in my future presentations.

Make the easy stuff seem hard

This one is pretty basic but the Cirque Du Soleil guys do a good job of it. At the beginning in most of the acts, the performers look a little tentative. There’s a bit of a dramatic flair, they look like they’re concentrating really hard (and they probably are) and setting a baseline for what’s coming later. By building up the suspense the audience is impressed right from the beginning. The stuff after that is just gravy. And when they break out the safety gear, you know stuff is going to get real.

Always mess up

I thought this was fascinating. In a couple of different performances, the performers screwed up the act. Once it was a high wire guy messing up a jump and another time it was during a giant spinning-dual hamster wheel act where one of the performers almost falls off. At first I wasn’t sure it was on purpose, but after asking around, they always mess up the same part of the show. Why? One, it adds dramatic flair. But most importantly, it adds to the perception that this is really hard stuff to do. Then when they go into the hard stuff and nail it, the crowd goes nuts. I’m not sure how to do this on the tech side, but I have a couple of ideas.

Know how awesome you are

These guys (and girls) do these acts on a pretty consistent basis. They’re so good they can create a fairly convincing fake mess up. At the end, they let you know it. They do a great job of selling what they just did and getting people to cheer for them. Ultimately I think this is about confidence, but it’s also about taking yourself outside of the bubble and remembering that not everyone can do what you do. When you travel with Cirque du Soleil all you see around you are people just like you, but you’ve got to remember that the audience can’t do what you do. And make them love you for it.

Have a theme

One of the reasons I love Cirque du Soleil is that every act has a theme. The costumes, the props, the music and the choreography all revolve around a central theme. Kooza had a definite South Asian feel and some of the acts played up that more than others. But all of it together helped tell a story and engage the audience more and each act built on the theme a little bit. This is probably a bit tougher to do in a technical presentation but I can think of some things I’d like to do that would be more thematic in my presentations.

If you get a chance to see Kooza, it’s a great show. Just watch for the mistakes.

The API is really basic right now and it only implements the findNearby method but hopefully it’s a start. And I want to round it out as I start to use it for more demos. It’s a really amazing amount of data.

I’ll indulge one small parental moment and share a couple of pictures of our daughter, Juniper Olivia Stewart. And I’ll be back to blogging next week. But probably a bit more sleep deprived and (even) less coherent than usual.

The example provided is a very, very basic one that just takes a GPX file and plots the waypoints on Google Maps. It’s an AIR application so to use it you just drag and drop the GPX file onto the app. The code is here.

I haven’t been able to do anything cool with it yet, but I have some things in mind once I get a bit of downtime. If you’re using it, I’d love to hear about it.

Part of that is because they rule their platforms with an iron fist. The iPhone is obvious. It’s arguably the most closed platform in recent memory. Every application has to go through Apple’s approval process, can only be listed on Apple’s store, and Apple takes a cut. It’s a fantastic device, it provides developers a way to make money, but it is incredibly closed and arguably bordering on big brother. But OS X isn’t perfect either. While I can install my own applications and control my own settings, things like getting the right APIs for Flash Player to handle video or multi-touch aren’t possible.

The iPad Cometh

So when the iPad was released and it was just a bigger iPod Touch, I was incredibly disappointed. If this is the future of computing then we’ve already lost. Apple is taking total control to a new and unfortunate level. It’s the same pay-to-play model as the iPod Touch so that you’ll be buying your applications from Apple (so they can take their cut), buying your videos and music from Apple, buying your books from Apple, and dealing with their DRM for all three. The ultimate lock-in.

The Honey Trap

This is what bugs me. As an evangelist I’m annoyed Flash isn’t on the iPhone. But as a user, I’m terrified that Apple has put a vice grip on getting content on my devices. It used to be that when you bought a device, you owned it and could basically do whatever you want with it. The model of the iPad and the iPhone is the opposite of that. You’re essentially paying for a device that then gives you the privilege to buy content from Apple. The honey pot of a seamless software-hardware experience has become a nightmarish trap that keeps you stuck and struggling.

As Mike Chambers said better than I can, having some support for HTML5 in Safari doesn’t make an open platform. One of the great parts of the “open web” is exactly how open it is. Anyone can put up any piece of content, at any time, without asking for permission. The web is accepting of Flash content, HTML content, Silverlight content, numerous video and audio codecs, and other plug-ins. Users have the ultimate choice about what they want to see and how they want to see it. That ecosystem has led to a lot of great, free content like games, video, and applications.

Which is why Apple has locked down the device. They can’t make money off of free. And instead of giving users choice and opening up their devices, they’ve decided to lock it down. The iPhone and iPad are each great pieces of technology and Apple deserves to make money off of them. But they could be so much better if they were open. The number of innovative things that an open ecosystem could do with this technology is mind-boggling. But that won’t happen because the only ideas that will see the light of day are ideas Apple lets through.

We’ve come a long way from 1984, but obviously not long enough.

So why me, someone with little PHP experience? I’ve always felt like evangelism is about growing your developer community and developer relations is about helping the community you have. At Adobe we don’t really have a specific developer relations role (it’s basically Mike Chambers) so the evangelists end up doing both. Which is fun because our community is awesome. But I also wanted a challenge and to grow professionally as an evangelist. I thought the best way to do that would be to get out of my comfort zone, immerse myself in a new technology, and execute on ideas that could be applied to any technology by any evangelist.

Luckily we’re working with some great PHP people and the PHP community is a very welcoming and open place. There are a lot of places where PHP and Flash fit really well together so there are features like data visualization, collaboration, video, and data-heavy applications where I think PHP developers can use Flash in a helpful way. And in the process hopefully I’ll end up being a better evangelist and helping to grow the number of Flex developers.

If you’ve got ideas, or applications that show off Flash and PHP together, I’d love to hear them. You can always drop me an email at ryan@adobe.com or call/text me at (307) 438-9716. I think 2010 is going to be a huge year for PHP and Flash momentum.

Overall User Experience

I really, really want Android to succeed. But the iPhone is still the king when it comes to user experience. I find the HTC Hero with Android to be much, much less snappy than the iPhone. When I click something on the iPhone, I get an immediate reaction. On the HTC Hero, there’s a noticeable delay which becomes very annoying. However I like the UI for the Hero a lot better. Android has a nice, polished UI that is mostly intuitive and a bit more interesting than the iPhone’s boring button UI. The responsiveness is what got me though. On a faster phone, I could see Android being king here, but right now: Winner: iPhone

Battery Life

I found the battery life between the iPhone and the HTC Hero to be pretty equal, they both last me less than a day with heavy use. But one thing that I found extremely annoying is that the HTC Hero takes forever to charge via USB while the charging the iPhone over USB works really well. As a result: Winner: iPhone

Software

I love the Android software. I know Apple has the “There’s an App for That” crap, but out of the box, Android rules. Being able to install applications with a barcode scan is also really slick. I found the Android software to be more full featured, have many more hooks into the social networking services I’m a junkie for, and generally just more fun to use. If it wasn’t for the sluggishness, it would be perfect. The exception to this is the mapping. It’s abysmal. No gesture support for zooming, you can’t click on markers and interact with them in the same way you do on the iPhone. It’s just terrible to use. But in general, even with that and all of Apple’s apps, Winner: Android/HTC Hero

Typing

I type a lot on my mobile devices because I use them pretty heavily for email. I found it took a while to get used to the Hero’s keyboard. I like the fact that Android offers you a set of words based on what you’ve typed so you can auto-correct. That feature also makes it easy to add things to the dictionary because you can just click the word you typed and it will be added (no more ‘shot’ and ‘duck’). But even with that enhancement the iPhone’s keyboard is just better at detecting which letter I want to type next. Maybe I just need to spend more time with the Hero, but Winner: iPhone

Annoying Things About Android/HTC Hero

No sensor that detects when the phone isn’t near your face any more. This is just a limitation of the phone but it is annoying as hell. I also think the phone is too “buttony”. While I like the rollerball, it seems like any time I want to do something I have to click a button. With the iPhone they did a great job of making it as gesture-based as possible. The browser is a good example. On the iPhone, to type a URL, just move to the top of the page, and type it. With Android, you have to push the “menu” button. Takes some getting used to and the iPhone feels more natural.

Annoying Things About the iPhone

No Flash Player for one . But I also loved the GPS indicators on the Android. The little status icon at the top tells you whether you actually have GPS signal, and the camera lets you know when you’re locked on so it can geotag your photos accordingly. I really wish the iPhone had that.

Summary

In the end, the iPhone is just too damn good. I have high hopes for the Droid, but I’m on AT&T so I won’t be seeing it any time soon. But if the new processor is as good as people say it is, then hopefully we’ll get a snappy Android phone on AT&T soon. When that happens, I’ll ditch the iPhone in a heartbeat.