Julia Child, Mr. Wizard, Monty Python … Good Eats Turns 10

Good Eats Turns 10This afternoon I was at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center in Atlanta, GA watching the live matinee performance of “Good Eats Turns 10” with Alton Brown. What a blast! I had a fantastic time.

TV camerasI don’t think I’ve been to a live TV show recording before (except for sporting events), so it was cool to see all the HD cameras, including the boom camera and the guys with the steadicams roaming around on the stage and in the audience. I was in the seventh row from the stage so I had a great view of the action plus it should be easy to find myself in some of the panning crowd shots (I was wearing my gold “Science, it’s what’s for dinner” t-shirt).

Patrick Belden (who composes all of the music for the show) and his Small Orchestra warmed up the crowd before the performance while they displayed a slide show of behind-the-scenes photos on the huge chalkboard that was the projector screen. The on-stage set consisted of the orchestra on the left, the giant chalkboard in the center (“not the actual chalkboard from the show” quipped Alton), and tons of Good Eats props on either side (“As you can see,” Alton said, “we kinda just dumped the truck.”). I spotted such classics as the beef cow, the lemon meringue pie slice, the giant popcorn kernel, etc.

Good Eats turns 10 stageThe stage manager briefed us on how to applaud out on the “commercial breaks” (i.e., “we’ll be right back!”) and then also gave us our cues to applaud when coming back from those breaks (i.e., “welcome back to Good Eats Turns 10!”). We also practiced yelling “Good Eats” as part of the opening theme music for the beginning of the show.

Without spoiling any of the surprises for those of you who will be watching the birthday show when it airs on Food Network, he’s a basic breakdown of the episode:

  • Alton sits down with Ted Allen for some interview questions about Good Eats, how he came up with the idea for the show, what his philosophy is (“laughing brains are more absorbent”), etc. The interview is supplemented with video clips, along with Alton’s countdown of his top 10 favorite Good Eats recipes and his favorite inventions/hacks.
  • Ted challenges Alton to create an invention out of the only uni-tasker in his kitchen. This was a great segment, just like on the show: Alton pieces together the hack while talking/thinking quietly to himself as the band vamps the theme music in the background.
  • … 15 minute intermission …
  • Alton brings out three of the winners of the “Good Eats Turns 10” contest to challenge him head-to-head in Good Eats Trivia Takedown.
  • Ted interviews the Good Eats Players (Bart Hansard, Daniel Pettrow, Widdi Turner, Lucky Yates, and another “special guest” who wanders in a little later) about what it’s like to work on the show.
  • And finally, what’s a birthday show without a birthday cake? Alton, Ted, “sister” Marsha, and W put together a cake, “Good Eats” style!
  • Curtain call: the entire cast and crew present, including Alton’s wife and daughter, come out on stage and receive a standing ovation from the audience.

All told, the show was about two and a half hours! It was really cool seeing all of these celebrities (or “cable-lebrities” as Ted Allen put it) in person just a few feet away, on stage. Portions were obviously scripted, but since it was being done in front of a live audience there was a lot of ad-libbing going on, in addition to interaction with and responding to the crowd. There were a few technical difficulties (I saw one of the steadicam guys on stage slip and almost fall over!) and even something for the blooper reel.

Only one thing really annoyed me: I won’t say too much, but let’s just say that one of the contest winners was really annoying once she got up on stage. She apparently didn’t realize (or care?) that the show was about Alton and Good Eats, not about her. She kept trying to throw out funny lines, or interact with Alton more than she needed to, which caused what I thought was some awkwardness between Alton, Ted, and herself that really detracted from the segment. I really hope the editors are able to piece something usable out of that (or maybe cut her out entirely). Maybe I’ll comment on this more once the show airs.

“Good Eats Turns 10” will air on Food Network on October 10. Watch for me! 😉

P.S. The title of this post is a reference to one of Ted’s first questions to Alton (“what do these words mean to you?”) Can you guess what the answer is? Tune in to find out!

Garmin nüvi 265WT

Garmin nuvi 265WTA couple of weeks ago, I discovered that my trusty Garmin StreetPilot c340 wouldn’t run on battery power anymore. As soon as it was disconnected from the power cable in the car (or from the USB cable when connected to my PC) it would just turn off. When plugged in, the screen would show it was “charging,” but after trying multiple hard resets and even opening a ticket with Garmin it became apparent the internal Li-on battery was dead. The Garmin rep told me it would cost a flat $89 to fix it! I did a little research and determined that it would be cheaper to attempt to replace the battery myself, as long as I didn’t mind purchasing a replacement battery, cracking open the case, and doing a little soldering. Other than the lack of battery power and some minor map problems the unit was working perfectly fine so I wavered back and forth (repair or replace?) for a bit. Eventually I decided to just sell the StreetPilot on eBay and put the proceeds towards a newer unit.

My new GPS is the Garmin nüvi 265WT which has a 4.3″ widescreen touch display, voice directions (with text-to-speech), Bluetooth, a built-in FM Traffic receiver, and a few other cool features.

Navigation and General Usage

The thing I liked the best about my StreetPilot was the user interface. It was simple, clean, and good looking. The nüvi sports that same simplicity and shiny UI that makes it easy and fun to use:

The large buttons make it easy to navigate using your finger and the touchscreen, and the widescreen format allows the nüvi to show more information on the screen without it getting in the way of actually seeing the map as your driving. One new feature I like is the indicator of the current road’s speed limit (although as you can see above I was going slightly over that on my way home from work this evening ;-)). Another benefit of the widescreen model is a QWERTY keyboard layout instead of the alphabetical one used on the StreetPilot, which makes text entry a lot faster.

The standard text-to-speech voices are present so the unit will read out street names when giving directions. You can also download other voices (and car icons) from the Garmin Garage. There’s not as wide a variety of voices available as there are for my sister’s TomTom unit though (even NavTones only has a total of 3 voices compatible with Garmin units).

In addition to the normal method of entering destinations (by address, by name, by coordinates, etc.) you can upload geotagged photos to the nüvi and have it calculate the directions to that location. I don’t see myself using this feature very often unless I’m just looking for some random place to go. I may, however, introduce my daughter to geocaching, as using the Garmin Communicator plugin for my browser in conjunction with the Geocaching.com website makes it really easy to send cache locations to the GPS (and there are apparently quite a few caches near my house).

Bluetooth

The built-in Bluetooth radio lets you use  your mobile phone with the nüvi for hands-free calling. I had no issues pairing my Treo with the GPS and then using the touchscreen to place a call.

You can answer incoming calls too, of course, and even “transfer” the call to your phone if you don’t want to use the speakerphone. Voice quality was pretty good on both ends. The nüvi even downloads your call log and address book from your phone allowing you to browse and dial from the device instead of looking at your phone (although the address book part didn’t work for me since I don’t use the Treo’s native contacts application). If your phone supports voice dialing, you can do that through the nüvi as well. Another neat feature of pairing your phone is that every phone number on the display turns into a hyperlink you can use to place a call. So if you’re stuck in traffic on your way to your dinner reservation, you can simply tap your destination’s phone number on the screen to call and inform them you’re going to be slightly late.

Traffic

Of course, you should have been able to avoid that traffic in the first place! 🙂 My StreetPilot supported traffic information, but you had to purchase a separate receiver and pay for a subscription. The nüvi comes with an integrated FM Traffic Message Channel receiver and a free lifetime subscription to the service (but there’s a catch, see the next section below!). My minor nitpick here is that the receiver is not “integrated” into the GPS unit itself but is part of the power cord. Thus, you can’t get traffic information unless your unit is plugged in with the car lighter adapter. I guess this makes some sense (you don’t need traffic information if you’re hiking or riding a bike), but I was disappointed that I have to have that bulky cable plugged in as I usually just have the GPS mounted to the windshield without the cord.

That aside, the service is a neat add-on. The traffic indicator on the map screen (see the upper left-hand corner of my first screenshot) will change color (green, yellow, red) to indicate the level of traffic ahead. If the nüvi detects heavy traffic along your way, it may automatically adjust your route around it. You can also get an overview of all of the traffic in your area:

And then see where it is in relation to your current location:

Advertising!

The nüvi 265WT comes with a free lifetime subscription to the FM traffic service, but “free” in this case means “ad-supported.” That’s right, spam on your GPS! 🙁

Tapping on the “offer” will show you a list of nearby locations associated with the coupon. Tap on the location and you’ll be routed there. It wouldn’t be so bad if these only appeared on the traffic screen shown above, but these little pop-ups will also appear on the main map screen while your navigating! Ugh! The only way to disable them is to disable the traffic receiver, so if you want traffic information you’re going to have to deal with the ads. So far I’ve only seen these two Best Western ones, so it’s possible I might change how I feel about this depending on what kind of ads I see. It’s not like these are targeted to my preferences, though, so I’m guessing they’re going to be more annoying than useful.

Other Misc. Features

ecoRoute is Garmin’s new addition to their software  aimed at increasing awareness of how driving habits affect things like your gas mileage. You can set up your vehicle profile (city/highway estimated mileage, gas type, and local cost-per-gallon) and then get detailed usage reports, like this:

This trip information is also stored in a CSV file you can download from the device and then load into your favorite spreadsheet to do some more analysis if you want. ecoRoute also adds a “Less Fuel” option to the traditional “Fastest Time” or “Shortest Distance” routing options. There’s even an ecoChallenge game that tracks your driving during a trip (how fast you accelerate, brake, keep a constant speed, etc.) and then rates and scores you at the end with the hope that you’ll try to beat your top score by changing the way you drive. That part reminds me of my wife’s Toyota Camry hybrid which has similar driver feedback mechanism to encourage eco-friendly driving habits.

I also like the nüvi’s built in screenshot feature (which I used to capture all of the images in this post), and the ability to easily change the boot screen. No more using xImage!

Finally, when connected to your PC via USB, the nüvi shows up as a 1.8gb flash drive making it extremely easy to transfer files to and from the device. 1.2gb of that is taken up by the system software and maps, but that leaves roughly 518mb on-board for custom vehicle icons, voices, POI files, photos, etc. The nüvi has an SD slot as well, but with all of that free space I probably won’t need to use it as much as I did with my StreetPilot.

We’re going on a quick weekend trip up to Atlanta this weekend (to see Good Eats Live!) so I’m sure I’ll have some more comments after I put the nüvi through its paces on a real road trip. So far, though, I’m really impressed with it.

Jolicloud on my EeePC

Jolicloud transforms your netbook into a sophisticated web device that taps into the cloud to expand your computing possibilities. The web already hosts a significant part of our lives: mails, photos, videos, and friends are already somewhere online. Jolicloud was built to make the computer and web part of the same experience.

I’ve been playing around with Jolicloud, which touts itself as an “internet operating system,” on my EeePC 4G Surf for the past few days. Here’s a brief review.

Installing Jolicloud on your netbook is pretty straightforward: you download the ISO image and then use their USB Creator tool to “burn” that image onto the install media of your choice (ex., a USB thumb drive or SD card). I did have some issues with the USB Creator not recognizing my 1gb thumb drive (running under Windows 7) so I ended up using unetbootin instead (it looks like a newer version of the USB Creator has since been released which might address that problem, plus there are the older manual instructions). Next, you boot your netbook from that thumb drive, click through a few setup screens, and before you know it you’re logging into your fresh new Linux distro. There’s a good overview of the installation process (including screenshots) here.

Jolicloud is based on Ubuntu 9.04 and uses the default Netbook Remix interface:

the netbook remix desktop

Fire up the Jolicloud application, however, and the “internet operating system” portion kicks in:

Jolicloud desktop

From here you can easily install other applications, most of which are “web apps” like Gmail, Google Reader, Twitter, Facebook, etc. What’s a little strange to me is that when you “install” one of these apps (like Gmail), you get an icon back on the netbook remix desktop to launch it (notice the xkcd icon on my first screenshot above). All it’s really doing is opening a web browser directly to that particular site, but Jolicloud (via Mozilla’s Prism) makes it look like an actual app instead of a web page. Thus, you won’t see the normal Firefox menu or toolbars, no browser favorites, etc. I’d rather just use Firefox directly with multiple tabs open, but I can see how this approach might make a netbook more user-friendly for the non-techie type (not to mention freeing up some valuable screen real estate on smaller netbooks).

I even managed to get Hulu running, which was impressive considering the problems I’ve had with Flash-based video on my Eee in the past. To be honest, though, I had never tried the Hulu site on my Eee before. At any rate, I watched the pilot episode of “Alf” on my tiny 7″ screen without any problems. Not exactly a 10-foot interface. 😉

Jolicloud has a big focus on social networking, so you can “follow” other Jolicloud users and see updates on what they’ve installed or are doing with OS:

following other Jolicloud users

Personally, I’m not into the whole social networking culture (i.e., I don’t have a Facebook page and don’t use Twitter) so this part of Jolicloud’s interface doesn’t really appeal to me. I don’t want people “following” me or seeing what apps I’ve installed, but I can’t find any privacy settings that allow me to turn that stuff off, either.

Which brings me to documentation: Jolicloud is still in private alpha testing but there seems to be a lack of any documentation, and there’s no depth to the wiki (which seems to only be one page). For support you’re just directed to Twitter, Facebook, IRC, or their GetSatisfaction page. That being said, when I sent an e-mail to feedback@jolicloud.com about my trouble with the USB Creator, I did get an actual response relatively quickly.

So it still has a little ways to go, but Jolicloud is shaping up to be a great alternative cloud operating system for your netbook.

Cookin’ up some Wii homebrew

I saw this post on Lifehacker yesterday about installing homebrew on the Wii without needing to use the Twilight Princess hack and decided, what the heck, let’s give it a try!

Wow, talk about amazingly simple. Only minutes after downloading the necessary files, I had the Homebrew Channel running on my Wii.

Homebrew Channel

After doing a little more browsing and downloading, I had a few homebrew apps to play with.

homebrew apps

Pretty slick. Using MPlayer I was able to play both a commercial and self-created DVD using the Wii remote for the basic controls. I’ll be honest, DVD playback on the Wii isn’t going to replace a standalone DVD player yet, but for a homebrew app, it’s pretty cool. Nintendo really should just build that functionality in! With MPlayer-Wii I was able to stream an .AVI video off of my NAS (via samba) for playback through the Wii. I hard to hardcode the filename in the configuration file, so this isn’t a complete video library solution (like what I do with my TiVos) but the possibility is there.

I played around with a few homebrew games like Duck Hunt, and plan to check out Quake and Doom. For now, as you can see from the screenshot above I’ve kept the Homebrew Browser (which allows you to install apps right from the Homebrew Channel instead of having to use your PC to download and then copy them to the SD card) and Balance Board Pro which shows off some of the features of the Wii Balance Board.

Cool stuff!

Indiana Jones Wii is fun, but annoying

Since we finished Lego Star Wars last month, my daughter and I have moved onto Lego Indiana Jones on the Wii. It’s a fun two-player cooperative game just like the Star Wars version, but just going through the first two sections (“Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Temple of Doom”) we’ve run into quite a few annoying problems.

Twice we hit a spot where we were unable to continue and had to start the entire level over: The first was during the chase of the ark on the military trucks near the end of “Raiders.” You have to jump from truck to truck, fighting the soldiers until the driver of the truck hops out. Once you beat him, you jump in the truck (using the C button) and drive forward to the next set of trucks. Well, on the first set of trucks we defeated the driver but the prompt to press the C button would not appear, so we couldn’t get into the truck. It just kept driving on, without a driver. Since we couldn’t get in to accelerate up to the next set of trucks, we had to start all over (and that second time, the C button worked). The next time we got stuck was near the beginning of “Doom” when you’re working your way up to the palace from the devastated village. You need all three characters (Indy, Short Round, and Willie) to step on switches at the end to open the palace doors. The problem was, we accidentally moved Willie (who was riding an elephant) into a pit she could not get out of. She kept re-spawning and then immediately dying over and over again. So we had the start that level over as well. Apparently we’re not the only ones who have run into these glitches, and others.

Another annoying thing is that you can’t skip the long cutscenes. After you seen it once, you just want to get past it and start playing. Well, you can’t. The same goes for the Video Room in the college: once you start watching one of the cutscene videos, you’re stuck watching the whole thing. When you have to play a few levels over, this gets annoying very quickly. In a similar vein, the animations on the map as you switch from level to level take a long time, something else you can’t skip. Each movie has 6 levels. If you’re at the college and want to play level 5, you have to sit and wait for the little red travel line on the map to draw its path through levels 1 to 5 first.

Oh well, it’s still a fun game to play …

First named storm of 2009

TS AnaIt’s been a slow start to the 2009 hurricane season … we’re halfway through August and just now have the first named storm, Ana.

Of course back in 2004, we had Charley in mid-August and then were hunkering down for Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne in quick succession in September, so it can ramp up quickly! Last year, my daughter had a “snow day” instead of the first day of school.

But anyway, here’s hoping the season stays slow, calm, and uneventful.

Trillian Astra is Gold

The developers over at Cerulean Studios announced today that with Build 117, Trillian Astra (for Windows) has gone gold. You can download the free version here.

I’ve been using the beta on Windows 7 for the past four months and am pretty happy with it (I’ve been a paid Pro user since 2004 and have upgraded to the Pro version of Astra as well). I still have one random problem where sometimes if I initiate a conversation with someone on Yahoo, they won’t get my messages, but if they start the conversation we can chat back and forth just fine. The random crashes seemed to have been fixed as well (at least, I don’t think I’ve had one since I got Build 117 a few days ago).

So if you’re looking for a good multi-service IM application for Windows and have been scared away from Digsby, give Astra a shot.

I’ve been Joliclouded!

Since my 900A is now my “main” netbook, I’ve been using my older 4G Surf to experiment with other distros. Last week I gave Tiny Core Linux a try: it’s only 10mb in size and loads entirely into RAM, leaving the 4gb SSD free for storage (and applications). It was definitely fast, and a neat idea, but it wasn’t the type of netbook experience I was looking for.

Tonight I got an invite to the alpha test of Jolicloud, another Ubuntu-based operating system targeted for netbooks. It’s pretty slick looking so I’m looking forward to trying it out. I’ve got the ISO downloaded and will post again once I have the chance to install it on my Eee and play around a bit.

Also, I haven’t watched it yet, but today’s episode of Tekzilla (#101) has a segment on Jolicloud.

Getting the most out of your TiVo

A TiVo is much more than just a souped up digital VCR. What separates TiVo from your cable company’s generic DVR (other than the awesome features of TiVo service itself) is the wide range of (mostly free) applications you can use to enhance your TiVo experience. I’ve written about some of these applications here before (like Galleon, streambaby, and pyTivo) but I figured one comprehensive write-up might be in order.

Continue reading ‘Getting the most out of your TiVo’ »

WIJFR: Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

It’s only natural that Alan, the broadminded hero of Doctorow’s fresh, unconventional SF novel, is willing to help everybody he meets. After all, he’s the product of a mixed marriage (his father is a mountain and his mother is a washing machine), so he knows how much being an outcast can hurt. Alan tries desperately to behave like a human being–or at least like his idealized version of one. He joins a cyber-anarchist’s plot to spread a free wireless Internet through Toronto at the same time he agrees to protect his youngest brothers (members of a set of Russian nesting dolls) from their dead brother who’s now resurrected and bent on revenge.

After reading the Publisher’s Weekly plot summary of Cory Doctorow’s “Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town” above, you’re probably wondering the same thing I did: WTF? 😕 It took me a little bit to get comfortable with the characters and the backstory, and even then I was still scratching my head (figuratively), not sure of what exactly was going on. As with the other Doctorow stories I’ve completed recently, I read this one on my Treo in iSilo format (you can download it for free here in a wide variety of formats).

The main characters are named alphabetically, but this is never clearly explained. So you start out reading about Alan (the protagonist), but then in one sentence it suddenly refers to him as “Art” and then goes back to “Alan.” This confused me because the previous Doctorow story I read was “Eastern Standard Tribe” and the main character in that book is Art. I figured, at first, this was just a publishing error. But then he (Alan) introduces himself to his neighbors as “Adam.” Eventually it became clear that Alan was being called by any name starting with A. His brothers are then (in order), Billy (who can see the future), Charlie (who is an island, yes, an actual island), Davey (an evil undead sort of thing and the main antagonist), and then Ed, Frank, George who are the nesting dolls (George inside Frank inside Ed). Now, remember that all of their names change constantly throughout the text, only the first letter stays the same. Then throw in that their mother is a washing machine and their father is a mountain and they were raised by stone golems and you start to see how messed up this story is. But messed up in a good way.

Alan has left the mountain (his father) and moved to Toronto where he is trying to blend in with normal people, like  his next door neighbors (alphabetically named Krishna, Link, Mimi, and Natalie but their names don’t change and Doctorow inexplicably skipped the letters H, I, and J). Alan’s brother Davey, who they killed some six years before, is back and hunting down the brothers one by one.

There’s another plotline running through “Someone” that involves Alan and Kurt (a dumpster-diving, anarchist techno-punk) trying to blanket their area of the city with free WiFi (open access to information via technology is a typical plot element in many of Doctorow’s stories). This whole technology thread (describing wireless access points, routers, network traffic, etc.) stands in stark contrast the fantasy elements of Alan, his family, and neighbor Mimi, who Alan discovers has her own secret: she has wings.

The narrative jumps back and forth between the present (Alan living in Toronto helping Kurt with his ParasiteNet project) and the past (Alan and the brothers growing up on the mountain and eventually killing Davey). Eventually, both story lines come together in the climatic, if not somewhat confusing, conclusion.

It’s a good read … check it out.