Tal-Kaptan..Ay Ay Captain!

Tal-Kaptan has always had a special in my memories, mainly because I used to go to eat at tal-Kaptan quite frequently when i was still a kid but moreover for the great quality I had grown accustomed to. Fast forward 7 years and you arrive to today were I got the chance to eat at the Tal-Kaptan retaurant at the Valletta waterfront.

Before I start I will give the main criteria I look out for when reviewing a restarant:

• Food quality (Obviously!)

• Cleanliness (Mostly of the table, cuttlery and glasses but I like to take a look at the toilets and the restaurant in general ;)

• Service (This is an important, many restaurants fail to fall in my good books simply because of an ignorant waiter, because of disastrous handling of a complaint or overly long waiting times. )

• The X-factor (How fun was the place ? was the restaurant comfortable and warm ? etc)

So without further ado, I present you: Tal-Kaptan

Tal-Kaptan is situated in the middle of the Valletta waterfront with tables available both on the outside (for those who like a the sea view) or inside. The restaurant is very nicely decorated with the interior resembling the inside of a ship. The walls are all panneled with wood while the floor is a nice cafelatte colour. The restaurant retained it's customary visible kitchen were one can admire the skill shown by the chefs present while preparing your plate. However enough about the decor and lets move to the seating, the food and the service..

The seating:

We were offered a choice of several tables of which I chose one at the furthest end of the restaurant. It's always interesting to see which restaurants are able to take care of all customers evenly and which simply forget about the extremities of their restaurant.

The seating was the first failing of this restaurant ( I wouldn't call it a disaster at this point but it can significantly reduce the pleasure of the overall experience.) The table we were seated at was wobbly and thus caused us a great deal of grief while cutting our food. Secondly and more importantly, the chairs available are some of the most uncomfortable ever. They are wooden with a short back that arrives only up to the small of the back. This is probably the worst type of seating especially if you try to stretch out your legs and resting your back while eating..I can assure you'd be in for quite a painful surprise.

The Food:

The food, to put it in simple words, was great. The crust of the pizza we ordered was light and crispy (some would say perfect) Ingredients were fresh and pleasant and overall made up to be a very pleasant meal.

The service:

Although not impeccable I daresay the service was good enough. Food was delivered in a normal time and even though waiters seemed a little unexperienced, we were taken good care of.


All in all a great meal in a great restaurant, Heartily recommended to everyone..


M

Inspirations - Inspiringly interesting..

Sunday 6th April...3 reviews to go..get the less interesting out of the way lest I should waste my wrath on the good ones...so without further ado.. Inspirations..

What can I say..mm..well the place is nicely located in the St. James Cavallier fort..erm thingy place...Due to the sheer misfortune, there was only 1 place left inside and therefore we (me and my better half) chose to stay outside (garden area). My first itch comes here..this open air area was bathed in orange light..the sort of light that is used in roads which gave the area and appearance of laziness..secondly, I never saw this area marked as "smoking area"..The legal notice served a couple of years ago says that smoking shouldn't be done in public places..so why the fuck does everyone whip their smoke emitting orifices as soon as there isn't a roof available ? Nicely enough we enjoyed a meal of good food and smoke :/

Thirdly...and this can definately be improved on by the cafe..I know the open air area doesn't have as many clients as the one inside, however bloody hell! getting a waiter to attend to you feels like trying to flag down a taxi in the middle of the brazillian rain forest!

Now that the bad comments are done with, let's move on to the good ones. The first thing this restaurant/cafe is to be commended for is the sheer choice of food stuff that is available on their menu..looking back I know there was pizza, burgers, sandwiches (in 6 or 7 different types of bread including multi-grain bread...Blimey!) and several other things which I really can't remember.


Notice the orange lighting


Prices weren't bad and as far as I can tell, the food was good, both the peperoni pizza I had and the multi-grain sandwich with chicken, mayonnaise and chutney were excellent. I heartily recommend this cafe although heed my words...Get a table inside!

M

The great digital divide..Why I'm free and you're not..

It's a strange feeling of outrage that I get when I read news about a certain company. The voting for the OOXML format has finished and the votes are being taken in [Groklaw]. Before I start to rant non-stop all of you who haven't taken interest about what OOXML is and the ISO voting process is all about, I suggest you read here .

I'm a linux user, confirmed evangelist and true believer; I read daily outrageous news about how monopolistic companies such as Microsoft use their position, market share, power, and when that doesn't do it, money to get to where they want...however I am amazed even more than normal at the blatant corruption that was presented by M$ during the voting regarding the OOXML format. After the failure of the vote to be accepted back last November, M$ have been given some time to arrange their 6000 page specification to reflect that comments done by the technical bodies around the world that have voted No, with comments. As one would expect, M$ didn't change jackshit in the spec and have represented it to the comittee for approval. What appears to have been done however, was that of using the time given to corrupt more high ranking members and getting more microsoft employees to attend the voting process. (Companies and vendors are not allowed to attend the voting process).

An interesting example would be the BRM (ballot resolution meeting ) held as reported by groklaw where 20 of the participants were direct Microsoft employees:

1 BELGIUM Mr. Bruno SCHRODER MICROSOFT
2 BRAZIL Mr. Fernando GEBARA Microsoft Brazil
3 CANADA Mr. Paul COTTON Microsoft Canada
4 COTE D'IVOIRE * Mr. Wemba OPOTA MICROSOFT West and central Africa
5 CZECH REPUBLIC Mr. Štepán BECHYNSKÝ Microsoft Czech Republic, Ltd
6 DENMARK Mr. Jasper Hedegaard BOJSEN Microsoft Denmark
7 FINLAND Mr. Kimmo BERGIUS Microsoft Ltd
8 GERMANY Mr. Mario WENDT Microsoft Deutschland GmbH
9 ISRAEL Mr. Shmuel YAIR Microsoft
10 ITALY Ing. Andrea VALBONI Microsoft Italy
11 JAPAN Mr. Naoki ISHIZAKA Microsoft
12 KENYA Mr. Emmanuel BIRECH Microsoft East Africa
13 NEW ZEALAND Mr. Brett ROBERTS Microsoft New Zealand
14 NORWAY Mr. Shahzad Rana Microsoft Norge AS
15 PORTUGAL * Prof. Miguel Sales DIAS MICROSOFT Portugal
16 SWITZERLAND Mr. Marc HOLITSCHER Microsoft Schweiz GmbH
17 UNITED STATES Mr. Doug MAHUGH Microsoft Corporation
18 Ecma International Mr. Brian JONES Microsoft
19 Ecma International * Mr. Jean PAOLI Microsoft Corporation
20 Assistant to Project Editor Mr. Tristan DAVIS Microsoft

source: groklaw

and to say that vendors weren't allowed to attend...also, which brainsick person would vote against their employer ? unless they want to quit their job that is..

Anyways, let me move to the higher purpose (and title of this article); The great digital divide. Now I know this term was coined several years ago when computers became an inherent part of our life and being actually computer literate was an advantage over another person who didn't have a clue. Several years later, 1 or 2 technological reforms and one realises that the above description isn't valid anymore..while computer illiterate users still exist and are a reality, it's also a fact that the majority of users are no able to perform basic functions with their computer (surf the web, check their email, write documents and have their own facebook profile). Ergo, the old description doesn't hold anymore and a new one takes place. The great digital divide describes the difference between users who are locked down to only the technologies that have been pulled in front of their eyes while others are free enough to look around and use software and technologies that don't lock them down to a specific set of rules set by a company but are able to choose from a host of software that really suites their needs and their needs only. (A hefty price tag, may or may not apply).

Let's examine the computer of the common joe in malta; The computer was probably bought as a whole from a vendor or general computer store (think scan, klikk, atoz,). The computer is pre-installed with windows (99% of the cases not an option the user can choose to forgo).

STOP 1

1) The user was not given a choice on which operating system to have pre-installed on his new computer.
2) The user was charged an extra 93.173EUR for this "choice" in the case of windows xp. The premium is even higher for windows vista home premium edition. ( The premium may be less in some cases were a large amount of advertising/promotional software is pre-installed on your computer which degrade computer performance)
3) This "choice" restricted the user to only certain models as some of the older (and cheaper ) models do not support windows vista and the accompanying breed of bloated software, ergo the user was restricted to purchasing certain types of hardware only.

continue..

If the computer needs to be of any particular use to the average joe who is buying it, the seller will inevitably question the need of an office suite (This need is more pronounced in the case of parents with children as they would need to use office software for assignments, homework etc). The vendor will inevitably present some strain of Microsoft office (say 2003 or 2007...2007 probably being preferred and partially forced on the user).

STOP 2

As we can see, this pushed the user onto yet more expenses of office software. As an after affect, a borderline machine running vista home will struggle to work with office 2007 open and thus even more expensive hardware may be needed.

Final note: That's the purchase of a new computer system in a vendor lock-in environment. Other casual problems the user will encounter are: Forced payed for upgrades to new versions of windows. Inability to open certain file formats with Microsoft office since microsoft office does not support the ODF file format (which is an ISO standard ). Problems with every other mortal on the planet who doesnt use office 2007 or an office suite that can open microsoft's ooxml formats. DRM software running in the background of your operating system that examines all running processes and media. Inability to remove certain software from your computer such as: Microsoft messenger, internet Explorer, windows defender.

I, on the other hand run linux, my OS costs me nothing except a download and an empty cd. I use a free office suite (openoffice.org) that can open and edit and save all standard file formats. My operating system comes with a host of software for anything I may wish to do, however I have the easy and clear choice of removing/replacing this software with anything I want.

Many will retort that not being part of the crowd works against me..I guess I'd rather be free than staying with the crowd and live in chains.


M

Fra Giuseppe...more likely Fra qammiel :/

It's quite an interesting phenomenon how certain restaurant/wine bars expect to charge the client an absurd amount of money for a plate of food or even worse a higher price for wine at a wine bar.

My idea of a wine bar is: "A place were 2 or more people can gather round a table with a glass of wine and eat something fun". Needless to say that the Maltese (and foreign ? ) business man has found a way to exploit this at their profit. Couple of months ago a group of friends (hereby referred to as "us" ) went to "ta' Stringi", a wine bar highly recommended by several people for "great Wine, Food & Atmosphere". Har! Upon arrival we were moved into a war-time bomb shelter (I don't care if you call it a wine cellar) were we sat _squashed_ around a table waiting for the Germans to finish their attack...If this place's idea of atmosphere is sitting in someone's mouldy cellar breathing air that hasn't been changed for the last century or so then some people need to make so serious considerations about taste. The Forte` of the evening was however what I dubbed as "Coolade man!" A boisterous FAT woman who declared herself as our "wine list" when asked for one and offering a choice of the more expensive bottles of wine she could carry :/

The food was good though..

Fra Giuseppe!

Fra Giuseppe declared itself in a more homely manner than Ta' Stringi, being a strong and bare (again) war time building reminding a lot of the fortresses from the period of the knights of st. John. A wine list was duly provided on sitting down which is loads better than having Coolade man stare at you while you give a blank look as you try to guess what wines the "wine bar" has in stock. Upon choosing a wine of popular support, I moved to the food menu and was delighted in finding that several types of platters were offered for choice. Being hungry and in severe need of food, I chose the "Cold meat Platter".

Quoting Dictionary.com:

"2.a course of a meal, usually consisting of a variety of foods served on the same plate."

Aha! Keyword: Variety and this is what was so severely lacking in my "platter"

My cold meat platter consisted of: (using maltese for this part, cant be arsed to translate stuff in english)

1 Bicca ftira
2 Werqiet Hass
2 Half Slices of Parma Ham
2 Grissini
5+ Crackers
3 minute pieces of salami
3 slices of salami

End.


If that is a cold meat platter I'm a duck and should be used for crispy duck recipes in a chinese restaurant. ( no torture pls)

That's all..the plate was so empty I don't have anything to say about it anymore than "It's a bloody RIP-OFF!" Don't go to this place it seriously sucks for 2 reasons: 1) The above mentioned
2) Having found myself hungry after mass yesterday (Sunday) me and my better half went to a "pizza, pasta and grill" in paceville of which I'm sorry to say I forgot the name (Faccata ta Al' pacino). Scanning through their wine list, I found the same exact Rose` D'anjou we drank at me giuseppe's place for more than Lm1 less! So, what's the point of a wine bar ? If a wine bar doesn't have wine's which are cheaper than other places and the platters are not really platter but well disguised traps for the rats ?

P.S. Atleast no Coolade man was present at Fra Giuseppe, service was fast and pleasant... +1

M

Money, Suncrest Hotel and the fucking Italians

It's an interesting marketing gimmick st. valentines...probably sometime ago one bloody restaurant owner decided it would be fun to add yet another excuse in the year to charge shitloads of money for roses, wine and meals..Needless to say he got what he wanted...And here I am the day after st. valentines (singles day) thinking back about my st. valentines dinner..

Knowing of the rushing queues that such events would enlist..I decided to book early at a hotel/restaurant for a dinner with my better half...Having seen suncrest's hotel menu at La Pavillon restaurant I decided to book a table for 2. I drafted an email and after checking for clear details and instructions on how I should be contacted back in order to confirm the reservation I sent the emails..





2 weeks and a half later i still got no reply...So i called..after an endless voyage around the bloody hotels pabx I finally gave up and instructed reception to call me back with a reply. Eventually they called and confirmed..Come the 14th..we arrived at the restaurant to find that it was disgustingly furnished. Well disgusting in a manner of saying as one would expect that a st.valentines dinner with a bloody special and rather non romantic st.valentines price would be accompanied with a nice restaurant filled with red heart shaped balloons, along with red streamers, candles and roses to complement. None of this..except a few hearts cut out of red cardboard by a 3 year old. and a couple of red ballons (ordinary ones).

The food: well this wasnt bad..However for one thing, their buffet tables leave much to be desired...both cold buffet, main course and carvery area have very little space between the bowls were the food is held and the bulbs that light it up were to insert your hand or plate in order to take food or receive food (in case of the carvery).

The food was good...Amazingly there was no chicken to speak off whatsoever...a poor choice when one considers that chicken is the primary food of quite a number of people.

What really made the whole experience not so good was the fact that even tho this is a: ST. Valentines dinnner, with a st.valentines price and st. valentines decorations, the hotel saw fit to still make residents at the hotel eat in the same restaurant as us...resulting in a very large disgustingly load and loathsome group of italians..After they had had their go..the buffet looked like it had just been ran over by a group of baboons that had been in their trees for some 6 weeks cos of floods....The mess was amazing...


bleh...rant over..had it not been for passing the evening with the person I love, I wouldnt even have bothered...



My 2EU cents (that''s all i can afford right now)

Il-Juwrovixin hoj!

I'll be honest, I didn't watch the semi-finals yesterday :$ *looks away ashamed* however this morning, like the patriotic member of the Maltese society I am, I directed myself to a (or is it "the" ? ) Eurovision Malta song website...found here





heart attack right in this blank space -->






Ok, I'm back to life...God that's an ugly site...I mean with all the money they spend on doing the actual show couldn't they spend some cash on creating a nice look of themselves online ? Anywho! navigating around the site I found a page with youtube links to all the songs in the semi-final this year..AHA!...would have been OK had it not be a direct capture from someone's telly sitting in the sitting room tuned onto Super One! I mean not that it would have been any better on Net ( I despise both), but atleast they should have been a direct capture of the event. Further more they are not all from the same user, so some are from La Qomna Qomna! if you prefer that kinda show...

KLINSMANNNNNNNN!!! *300 like shout*


Oh yeah, to make justice to the artists I started watching some of the bleeding videos...Some points we (me and my alter ego) would like to make:

Klinsmannnnnn, you need to learn how to mimic playing your guitar well..the chords should vibrate if you hit them hard enough (we know it's a recording sweet mummy's boy :) )

Mary Spiteri, please go get a facelift, wrap yourself in a bag and go live a normal life, you're past your sell by date, europe is cheap but not _THAT_ cheap

Klinsmannnnnn, get a hair cut - EMO -

Jean Claude somethingoranotherwhatsyourface - either the version of your song i watched was really bad or you were more out of sync than a Japanese technicolor cartoon!

Klinsmannnnnn, duuuude, guitar too low, arms too short, you look like you're in a fit to scratch your balls

Anyways, that's dealt with, I don't know who passed the rounds and I'm pretty sure I won't care to watch it anyway..And don't say I'm not patriotic...It's the love for my country and the pitying look from other european countries that leads me to this action...Italy! Good on you! on the other hand, Sanremo pffft!


Mewt!

Here we go again! Pc Woes!

Happy Christmas to me! or is it ?

well after the latest bash of games that I can't run properly..wait lemme do a list:

CoD4 - Barely runs at 800x600 everythign on low
UT3 - Don't dare try it
GOW - Har!
bioshock - lowest works :)

theres probably a never ending list but these are simply the ones that interest me. Anyways to keep this post short, my aging P4 with accompanying 6800gs isn't coping anymore with my needs. (A very respectable machine however :) ). So hey presto! i found myself going round ultramalta's and razercomputer's website for parts to buy and boy was i surprised!

It seems that since I had bought my pc things have changes a "bit" money wise.

An example: I had bought my Xclio Jr Black case for a whopping Lm12 4 years ago...It's a nice case by all means with fan at the side and front, mesh to show off the hardware and associated alien like bars of light >.>

So how come the average case price nowadays starts from Lm34 -Lm38 and rises up to Lm125 and more ? I admit that some cases yes are innovative with heatsinks at the front and other kinky gizmos that make the price worth while..However imo my case had all the stuff needed for a normal case..Made of metal with a door to cover cd drives etc, screwless mounting for optical drives, HDD bay that can slide out, space for extra fans at the back etc.. And it cost Lm12! Holy crap Oo

Seems like gamers have made the Computers peripherals market think they can get away with whatever they want :/ stand up and complain boys and girls!

Im off to look for some more cost savings..it's a budget Xmas after all!

M

Chicken ?

So back to it all... A few months ago I had decided to start writing small reviews about the restaurants/bars/fast food outlets i would be visiting and even though the website I intended never took off...I can always write them here :P

KFC

Chicken..great stuff and so it was...However a number of things chipped the experience.

1) A queue of people waiting to be served and only 2 persons were taking orders..I mean i know your sales figures might not be as high as those of McDonalds, however having more ready to help you clients means faster delivery time making it all the better for the customer..

2) Even though I said 3 times "Variety meal large and Toasted Twister Medium" and the person behind the counter repeated that to me..I still got 2 medium meals..Atleast they offered to change my meal to large for 30c

3) No straws..We did order drinks with our meal however we got no straws and so I had to get up and go ask at the counter myself again..(Is this a side effect of #1 ? )

I think that's that...the chicken was good though..


Food: 8/10
Experience: 5/10


P.S. Experience includes everything - from service to the availability of seats, general cleanliness etc etc..


M

The start!

I have decided to use this blog a little bit more in the future so im going to be wasting some time talking about the stuff that really ticks me off..let's start:

Scan Malta


Right so after a nice night of thunder I find that my year old router took the worse of it and ended up with 2 burnt ethernet ports. Oh well time for a replacement. Scan, being close to home ended up being my first choice. Amazingly enough it would have been faster for me to walk to A to Z then stay at scan. Being the second person in line to be served, it's only amazing that i spent half an hour in queue just because the person in front of me couldn't decide if she wanted wireless internet with her new laptop. I'm sorry but issues like these should be discussed with a sales representative beforehand and not in the Parts/Upgrades queue.

Oh well, A to Z will work fine next time..they're always empty..

It's here!

Well seems like the time's up... I have my car test in 2 hours...Hope i get to make it....the generals my parents are also managed to keep it hidden from me that my car was ready for pickup; my mum told me today..this puts even more importance on the way i drive

I HAVE TO PASSSSSSSSSSSSS :|

WAY TO GO..jekk ma jaddinix nidhol go hajt bih bkollox!


WIld Cherokee! <--- ull soon understand this :o :p

M (mewt) Shumacher -- Over and Out!


<3

Way back to sum it all up

mmk

stuff has moved so fast i havent had time to update this blog i started while i worked at ######..yes I have left that place..and yes I did get a new job (it rocks)..and yes stuff does seem to have taken an upswing for most of the stuff..

One of the things i wish I could save but can't is probably the lucidlan site which I'v advertised in this blog before... In a few words, it's gone...it can be called a lack of communication of whatever..thing is that suddenly communication between gatemaster and the rest of the team stopped.....everyone was too proud to actually spill out the beans so basically it all blew up...the server that was used to host the site seems to have been taken offline also as the ip has changed and all the hosted services disappeared..ah well...of all the mixed feelings i have about this matter i will voice none to avoid any further conflict

Well that's that...over and out for now


M



P.S. Let the bodies hit the floor!

O_0

i mean ok 2-4mbit is reasonable but hey im still shocked till now, i saw the benevolent speed of 8Mb\s for a wow patch in malta.. i'll let you do the maths, i need some water and a toilet :|