Rick's Wines and Whines

Wines and Whines

Contents: Wines

Contents: Whines

Rick's Web Site

Contents: Wines

Contents: Whines

Rick's Picks

Ratings from trips

Good Stuff Cheap

Stories of Wine Tasting.

Whines: My Brother's Cool New Book! (And why aren't you reading it?) Living with Wild Orchids in Sumatra !

Whines: Contrarian Reconsiderations of Alternative Proposals (C.R.A.P.)

Whines: Free Speech

Whines: Our New Location, Austin, Texas

Whines: The Tales of Texas

Whines: Travels

Whines: Humor

Whines: Technology

Whines: Space Pictures and Pointers

Whines: Movies, Movies, Movies!

Whines: Spellos, not Typos

Whines: My Brother's Cool New Book! (And why aren't you reading it?)
Living with Wild Orchids in Sumatra !

		Wines and Whines
		Rick's Web Site

A collection of wine information, humor, opinion, and technology.

What you'll find here now:

Information related to wines. Mainly California wines, but with some slight mixture of French, Australian, and occasionally German.
Some information about our new hometown, Austin, Texas.
Rants and raves on a number of topics. Some technology, some language, some free speech, some politics. Some of the rants are complete, some just titles. Check the list below for examples. Content soon.

Here are the sorts of things that will be here in the (near, I hope) future:

Discussions of under-appreciated and under-utilized technology, such as fuzzy logic and neural networks.

Pointers to other interesting places in the Web. Jokes, e-zines, satellite pictures, a mixed bag.

			Whines: My Brother's Cool New Book! (And why aren't you reading it?) Living with Wild Orchids in Sumatra ! My brother Dave has written a new book, Living with Wild Orchids in Sumatra, about his experiences in the lowland and mountain jungles in the tropics, when he was an oil geologist there some years ago. Fascinating reading. If you are interested in orchids at all, you at least have to read the web page here.

			Whines: Contrarian Reconsiderations of Alternative Proposals (C.R.A.P.) Tired, old ideas turned on their heads and evaluated from Rick's typically twisted perspective.

			Whines: Free Speech A local hotbutton. The network you are on right now is part of it the solution and part of the problem. Censorship, from "politically correct speech" to book-burning, is a bad, bad, bad idea.

			Whines: Our New Location, Austin, Texas We moved down hyar a year ago or so, to have a little adventure with a new environment. The results so far: works for us.

			Whines: The Tales of Texas Moving here was a bit of a culture shock. Some things were really unfamiliar and might be interesting to others who have not yet suffered this culture shock. There are more than fifty (very short) chapters so far in this trek.

			Whines: Travels Occasionally we get out of the house and even out of town. Some pix from recent travels are here. Take a look.
			Whines: Humor

			Pointers to some great humor collections on the Web. Some classic items will be right here.

			Whines: Technology
			Pointers to, and some local versions of, information about some technologies that Rick finds useful and underutilized, particularly Neural Networks and Fuzzy Logic.

			Whines: Space Pictures and Pointers Satellite images of earth, and other space pictures. Some here, collected from JPL, NASA, SPOT, Landsat, SIR, et al. Pointers to places in the Web where such pictures live.

			Whines: Movies, Movies, Movies! You like movies? I do. We do. And we've seen a lot of them. And movies are always fun to pontificate about. Well, here's my list of movies that one really ought to see to understand the breadth of the movie experience. Classics and moderns, comedies and dramas, crimes, spies, blow-em-ups, all are welcome here. Search the movie database See the whole movie database
			Whines: Spellos, not Typos A guide to common spelling errors that aren't unintentional slips of the finger but misunderstandings of usage. You see them everywhere, from the grocery store to the newspaper. For technical and non-technical readers alike.

Comments and flames to the author. "Why use rational argument when there's a flame-thrower handy?" Hey, go ahead. I didn't exactly leave the gloves on when I wrote this. webmaster@ricksoft.com

This site has recently moved to a new Linux server. Please report any problems that you encounter.

Rick's Picks

Our ratings of many recent, and some old, wines. Stress on moderately priced wines affordable by mere mortal wage slaves like us. No Chateau Margaux, but no Ripple, either. Personal tastes, to be sure, but you won't have to put up with The Wine Spectator.

Ratings from trips

Our latest trip to Napa and Sonoma in June 1996; story and ratings of more than 100 new current wines from the wineries and local stores in 1997 and 1998.

Good Stuff Cheap

Rick's picks of recently-tasted wines. Ones you might actually want to try, especially if you're on a modest budget. All of them somewhere between Margaux and Ripple.

Updated July 2003.

Stories of Wine Tasting.

Come with us as we visit some of the wine-producing areas of this country and Europe. Thrill to tales of travels to such exotic places as the Phillips 66 gas station in Vallejo, California.