Kristy’s birthday was on Sunday, so over the weekend we had a good excuse to sample a variety of Newtown/Erko eateries. If you’re in the area looking for a bite, here are some goodies:

Twelve is a slightly-upmarket (relatively speaking) restaurant on King St, Newtown. It’s got big glass windows for that fishbowl/watch-the-world-go-by effect. For the first time I can remember for ages, all 5 of us at dinner (my family came along too) had no complaints or regrets in our meals. Beautiful food, well made & presented, good service, and a dessert menu that’s worth going back for alone.

Particularly the sticky toffee pudding.

Burgerlicious was Sunday lunch. Fresh, tasty, and just like your traditional local burger-shop, only a step up in quality.

Shenkin was a real winner. This little cafe in Erskineville (Erko rd, up towards the Newtown end) is run by an Israeli family – the whole family too [thanks Dave in the comments]. They do decent coffee, have a decent menu, and make simply fantastic chocolate croissants. Often when I’ve had them before, particularly from French bakeries, I’ve been very disappointed in the little hard pellet-like chocolate filling. These, however, were the real deal. The chocolate seems to be an integral (load-bearing) pastry ingredient. Excellent gear.

Finally, although this wasn’t birthday fare, The Bank near Newtown station has a brilliant Thai restaurant underneath it, Sumalee Thai. For Newtown it’s definately pricey, but absolutely wipes the floor with every other thai place, including Pothong Thai. Up in the pub, however, from 6pm on a weekday night you can get a beer plus a thai curry for $10. Delicious bargain.

Any other favourite dining places?

I spotted a sign wrapped around a telephone pole on the way home the other day, advertising a rally on the 19th of July [pdf link]. The organisation is called the “NoToPope Coalition”, and apparently stand against the Catholic Church on a number of things, including the right to (at Saturday’s rally):

• Defend the right to protest
• Say “No!” to homophobia
• “No!” to anti-condom policies
• Defend reproductive rights

The last one is a little curious. I assume that what they mean by that is ‘the right to choose not to reproduce’, but it’s certainly a strange way of putting it. I’ve never before heard of anyone charging the Roman Catholic Church with denying their reproductive freedom. There’s a reason, after all, for all those large Catholic families.

The politics of coffee isn’t just about free trade. My newest bean supply is from Campos Coffee, possibly the best coffee around. I bought a bag of the Obama Blend. The description runs like this:

“Great depth of character, strong, and eloquent. This very appealing blend unites coffees from Africa and the Americas to produce a cup which has gotten us excited. Formidable middle palate flavors, syrupy with an uplifting finish.
Excellent drink for going forward.”

As it turns out, it’s very good. I’m all for change.

The good news is I made a cup this morning in my machine at home, and it tasted just like one bought from the store. Needless to say, I’m pretty chuffed.

Ping pong.

Bible college pastime, ministry aid, tool of international diplomacy.

Penny Arcade reports: parts one/two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

Gold.

Slight update:

I’ve upgraded the Sparkle updater system, to fix a couple of things. Firstly there were a few bugs that could cause crashes if it couldn’t find the update information feed properly, but secondly there was a change in how .zip files were extracted in between the last couple of updates.

This means that the auto-updater might not work exactly as you think it should this time around. It may well download, then crash out of the updater, complaining of an error in extracting the file.

This sucks slightly, but it’s easy to get around. Just download the file yourself, extract it, and you’re up and running again. Ideally, this will be an isolated occurrence.

The only other thing I’ve changed with Paradigmatic is altering the web links within the program (under the ‘Help’ menu, for example).

To get the new version, download it (0.6.1, 2.3 MB zipped .app file), or hit ‘Check for updates’ in the Paradigmatic menu bar. If you like, see the full notes, or read the FAQ.

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