Cocktail Hacker

I’ve never really been a football fan, but word on the street is that there is some kind of large game coming. Okay, I’m not totally daft. Super Bowl XLIII is next Sunday and I plan to spend this week preparing you to enjoy some cocktails while leaving you time to enjoy the game. This week isn’t just going to be a cobbled together mess of drinks though. I have a plan.

Seems to me that when you’re getting ready for a Super Bowl (or any other major event) party that one thing you should consider is the prep time required for the drinks (and food) you’re planning. It doesn’t make sense to be spending three minutes per drink when there is a game on you’re trying watch. So, in that spirit, I’ll be focusing my efforts on drinks that can be prepared ahead of time or drinks that require nearly no time to prepare.

The fun doesn’t stop there though. I’m a huge fan of food, but more than that I’m a huge fan of cooking. So I’m going to throw a couple food recipes into the mix that also fit the prep ahead or quick assemble theme. Check in tomorrow for the first installment. Until then, happy drinking.

I’ve decided to discontinue the use of the CocktailHacker twitter ID in favor of simply using my own ReeseLloyd. In theory all future posts will get autotweeted to my account.

I decided to change the comment settings to no longer require commenters to be registered. I felt forcing people to register may stifle people’s willingness to comment. So, from here on out you’ll only need to put in a name and email. Comment away!

Jim Harriman of SpaghettiLogic.org has created an amazing family tree of drinks using each drink’s ingredients as genes. The result is pretty cool. Read his write up for more information.

I think this kind of analysis could really be very interesting if you added some more metadata to the party. Perhaps information such as Gary Regan’s drink categories. I think it could show some interesting relationships between cocktails. A project for the future indeed.

If you’re interested in some of the science here are some links you might like.

Phylogeny on Wikipedia

PHYLIP – The software package used to crunch the data

My source – Make Magazine

I’ve been waiting about 3 weeks for these and I’m quite excited. Below are pictures of my new greeting cards and calling cards from moo.com. Moo allows you to print cards with pictures directly from your flickr stream and you can customize the backs as well. I’ll let the pictures do the talking.