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Although this has been posted all over the place, I’m going to post it here too. Randy Pausch is a professor of Computer Science (among other things) at Carnegie Mellon University, which is where I did my graduate work. The professor is now dying of pancreatic cancer, and will leave behind a wife and three young children. Before he left the university for good, he gave one final lecture, where he talked about achieving your childhood dreams. The actual lecture is about an hour and twenty minutes, and well worth the time invested - right up to the last second of the speech. Funny and moving. It made me proud, very proud, to be a CMU graduate.

In addition, Dr. Pausch is the founder of the Alice software project. According to the web site, Alice is an “innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation that tells a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web.” But it’s more than that. It’s nothing less than the ultimate fulfillment of what started with Logo back in the 1960’s and 70’s - it teaches kids how to program computers, without realizing they’re learning it. Picture an application programming environment with full graphics, allowing users to “script” 3D actors, objects, video, with drag and drop tools that literally prevent you from ever making a syntax error. And you can instantly see the results of your work, as virtual worlds come to life and move around with the touch of a key. How far we’ve come from turtle graphics!

Apparently Alice is already being used on a significant percent of college campuses to teach undergraduates about programming. What an astounding legacy to leave to the world. Thank you, Professor Pausch. I wish I had had the chance to get to know you when I was at CMU.

Tonight’s dinner was a melange of Chinese goodies, including some mild winter melon soup, roasted duck, and homemade pork dumplings with spicy sauce, among others. In lieu of trying to match all that (daunting, but possible), I opted to open a bottle of after dinner, just for sipping - moderately better than a dessert, I suppose. Because it’s practically Indian summer right now (going up to 90 this weekend!), I tried to figure out something light, though I wanted a red, and preferably something that I hadn’t had before. What I wound up going with was called Marzemino. (more >>)

My wife and I went shopping at the Trader Joe’s in Fairfax last night, and I did what I always do - walk the aisles of cheap wine. Not that cheap wine is a bad thing, in Trader Joe’s case. (more >>)

We had our friends Joel and Eunjae over this evening, and had a great time. Joel knows his music, and always shows up wherever he goes with an iPod chock full of 80’s songs. We plugged that sucker into our local sound system (the front input of my TV, as it turns out), and it was party time. Joel also brought a great wine which was the hit of the evening, and taught me something new. (more >>)

Opened a bottle of Lozano Añoranza Crianza 2004 tonight, a 100% Tempranillo wine from La Mancha. I don’t know much about Spanish wines yet, so I thought I would give this one a chance. (more >>)

Tried another new varietal tonight - Piedirosso. The name basically means “red foot” in Italian; it’s a red, indigenous grape from Campania in southern Italy (the region where Naples is). (more >>)

One of the great things about wine, I think, is that everyone’s subjective experience of it is different. Like all great sensory experiences, your experience of a particular wine is often going to be due as much to the surroundings - the meal, the company, whatever - as to the wine itself. And you get to own that experience; whatever else it is, it’s yours. (more >>)

When I heard about the theme of the latest Wine Blogging Wednesday assignment, I got excited: try wine made from some region’s “indigenous” grapes - veering off the beaten path big-six varietals and going native. Being a member of the Wine Century Club (currently over 140 varietals and counting), I’ve been meaning to get started writing something about what I drink. I love trying something new, even if the odds may not favor it being the next Côte-Rôtie. (more >>)

We had our friends Bob and Xiao Qi over this evening. Bob used to teach Spanish, so he really likes Spanish wine. So I opened up a couple of different bottles, and one of them really surprised me - it was Don Salvador Monastrell 2004. This is available in a lot of places around here, and for under $10, so I wasn’t expecting much. But what we got was beautiful… (more >>)

I got an email out of the blue last week from the wine editors at the Washington Post: somehow they got the email addresses for the members of the Wine Century club living in the DC area, and invited us to participate in a follow-up article they were writing. I saw in today’s Food section that I had a little quote included in final article, talking about a few of the wines I tried on my way to the Century.