Billy Munnelly writes about wine in Toronto; my dad subscribes to his newsletter and even had him over to entertain some friends. It was a solid night.

He's got a wine guide out and as I began reading through it, I found it interesting.

I saw Sideways, and liked it. But I have no use for detecting notes of chocolate in fermented, foot-stamped grapes. 

For me, the LCBO (ie. the only place one can buy liquor in Ontario) is big and confusing. There are a lot of wines, and I think I'm in the majority when I say that I usually look for ones with cool labels, and that are Merlot or Pinot Noir. I did a tour of Jackson Trigg's once, and I drank Beaujolais Nouveaux in France for 3 weeks straight, so I have two points of reference. Other than that, it's a collage of neat labels. One picks one.

Now I pick two. Billy divides wine into three types: simple, medium or rich, and then white or red. He takes what the LCBO offers and selects only "good" wines, then categorizes them: simple, medium or rich.

This makes wine much more comprehensible. So now, I always buy two bottles; usually a simple and a rich one. And I drink both in the same night. Alternating glasses. You learn a lot about a simple wine in the context of a rich wine.

So, if you drink a lot of wine, and don't know what the hell it's all about (and don't want to detect notes of gooseberry), try Billy. 

The recently named "Ballmer Peak" has been known and exploited for years. 

VPN; Green Room; riding the peak.

WWII

Bumper stickers are personal expressions made to those in your vicinity -- really just retro versions of twittering.

So, will people affix little screens to their bumpers to convey to commuters all that is inessential to them? It could go too far very very quickly.

To coin a term, "jing-jangle" is to have objects that jangle in both of your front pants' pockets, so that when you walk, there is uninterrupted jangling.

This is to be avoided.

Solutions: one can put all jangling items in a single pocket, or one can hold the jangley items of one pocket in one's hand until finished walking.

While it's okay to jangle, it is certainly not okay to jing-jangle.

Lonely Planet was, and is, the gold standard for travel books. Want to know a $45 a night hotel in Paris that's safe and clean -- spend $25 on Lonely Planet Paris.

But, frankly, reading such a book is not a very rich experience. You can't really tell if your wife would prefer Paris' Marais district over Saint Germain des pres. And you have no idea whether the information is up to date.

Flickr & Youtube
Today, I still plan travel with a Lonely Planet guide, but I go beyond. The photo management site Flickr, sold as a tool to store and share photos, doubles as tagged photographic evidence of everything on Earth. Want to see an Andalucian Villa? Do a Flickr search. The key I've found is to search for both a place name and an activity. Searching for "paris" is too general. Do "Paris" and "Shopping" or "Seville" and "yelling." If you're going outside the tourist season (when most photos are taken), throw in a month or season name. Before booking a hotel room, search for that ... most often than not, I've found one person has taken the obligatory room and window shots.

Flickr is enjoyed by photo snobs, so there are plenty of beautiful shots. Not so much with youtube. But by searching for videos taken within a town or street -- even if they're of two kids doing skateboard tricks -- instantly immerses you in the overseas environment. Seeing the action can make what is at first foreign come to be natural.

Tripadvisor.com
These guys seemed to get very smart in the past year -- or, like fax machines, they only became useful after they become popular. Either way, it seems that even the most remote hotel is now reviewed by multiple people, with detailed written reviews, a quantitative survey and even, occasioannly, amateur photographs. In many cases, by reading individual reviews, you can reconcile wildly different review scores. For example, one person may give a hotel 5 stars and comment that it was very clean and friendly, while another would give it 2 stars and add that the towels were sub-par and it room service was slow; the first person may have splurged on a rare, nice hotel, whereas the latter may be used to extravagance and found this place lacking.

Expedia also has hotel reviews, and I believe they are tied to actual reservations made through Expedia, so they're much more likely to be authentic -- that said, as a writer, I like to think I can spot a bullshit review.

Booking
Hotels.com and other sites often have very good special prices. They key here is to check every day for weeks in advance of a trip. Furthermore, it's worth it to call the hotel to confirm the reservation within a few hours of making it through one of these sites.

Information
Finally, if I can't find some information anywhere else, I use Yahoo Answers. Here I can post a question and categorize it narrowly -- often, within 2-3 hours I have multiple responses. Typical questions may be: how much is a taxi from XX airport to the centre of town.

Narrative worked for cirque de soleil ... and this guy's pretty good too.

Pricing a VW Passat on vw.ca, saw:

"look half your age and twice your portfolio."

I first heard of Ryan Air in 1999. The buzz was that you could fly most places in Western Europe for a pound, plus taxes, if you booked far enough in advance. I didn't think it would take off (ha). Apparently it has .

So I wonder, since it is possible to take seven flights in seven days for about seven dollars (okay, maybe $100 total), will people begin to make a sport out of flying around Europe for no other purpose than to fly? It's not like the flights offer much hospitality, but then neither does much listed in Lonely Planet books, and they seem to be selling okay.

Airport enthusiasts, flying enthusiasts and people who check things off their "TTD before I die" list are likely candidates to spend a week-off flying to Russia, Greece, Germany, Spain, Russia (again), Paris and home.

When I carved a big circle with my euro-rail pass in 1999, I learned I could save money on a bed by taking slow, all-night trains and finding fold-down chairs. A half-full Ryanair red eye to Moscow might be the equivalent.

So, will the popularization of the Ryan 'rounder come true? I'll bet you a buck it will.