I REPEAT: There will be NO Lost blogging tonight.

You see, Jenn & I welcomed a new addition to our family today: Evie

Full stats:
Evangeline Ann Miller
Born @ 10:41 AM on Tuesday, February 2, 2010
7 lbs., 7 oz.
20 in. long

Mom & Baby are doing fine, but we won’t be in our normal routine (though we *may* watch the premiere) so NO LOST BLOGGING (OR SPOILERS).

And to answer the most obvious and oft-repeated question: NO, we did not name her after Evangeline Lily who plays Kate on Lost.

We named her after one of our favorite songs: Evangeline by Matthew Sweet.

Have a nice night.
Enjoy Lost.
I’ll see you all on the flipside, later in the season (maybe even next week).

Oh, and a more thorough, proper post on our Evangeline (with many more pictures) is coming very soon. I hope.

G’night!

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*sigh*

I guess I’m *that* guy, so please forgive for sharing some links with the similarly obsessed among you. Everyone else, please avert your eyes (and ears) for the next 4 months or so.

(Sorry).

I’ll start out with my own tongue-in-cheek video, Previously on Lost: What?

From the sublime to the ridiculous: a petition (from fans) to turn DisneyLand’s Tarzan Treehouse (formerly Swiss Family Robinson) into a Lost attraction.

Here’s the first actually useful bit of video I have: Lost in 8:15. A clever recap a la Sopranos in 7 minutes.

Contrast that video with some of the Season 5 bloopers:

If you’re into more official stuff, check out Lost University (in its final weeks). It’s the last of the alternate reality lite “games” for Lost.

Finally, here’s a slightly spoiler-y article from EW featuring the cast, Damon & Carlton and a brief Q&A with JJ Abrams.

Enjoy!

See you on February 2nd!

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Seth,

I had Owen with me this morning and he was telling me how much he missed you. He wanted me
to take his picture and send it to you.

Happy Tuesday!

The visual evidence:

Owen pouting

I love and miss that kid and, obviously, he loves and misses me.

I think it gets to me mostly because he looks so much like I did at that age, pout/scowl and all.

See you soon, Owen!

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Wait.
That sounds gross.
Strike that.

In any event, here are some links and sites I’ve found in my travels that I think will be useful for Nook folks specifically, but also for anyone interested in the nascent eReader segment, plus a few free ePub (eBook format) sites thrown in for good measure.

• MobileRead

They’ve got a dedicated Nook forum, but this seems like a great site for eReader fans everywhere, regardless of device, eBook format or software.

• nookTalk

Very similar to MobileRead – a blog w/ forums – but solely Nook-focused.

• nookaholic

A blog about the Nook written by a NYC-area college student.

• nookboards

Blog & forum.

• nook-Look

Free wallpapers & screensavers to make your nook pretty.

• Google Books

Legacy books & magazines in ePub format.

• Project Gutenberg

The grandaddy of all free eBook resources. Great even if you don’t own an eReader.

I’m also a bit intrigued by the similarly Android-powered “Alex” eReader that was on display at CES (not that I went or had my hands on one).

And I’m sure my opinions will change once I get my Nook, but having played around with the Kindles of multiple in-laws (say that five times fast) I think I’m going to be happy with any eInk device.

Ok.
I’m done.
No more talk of any more e-anything words.
Too complicated.

Talk to you when I get my Nook (and likely do one of those douche-y unboxing videos & posts). Off to Goodreads now to mark some books as to-read.

Happy Friday!

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[Int. Car on the way home from school & work]

Owen: Is it dirty?
Me: Is ‘what’ dirty?
Owen: Is it dirty?
Me: What? The dirt?
Owen: Yeah! Is the dirt dirty?
Me: Yes, Owen, the dirt is dirty.
Owen. Dirty dirt!
Me: Ha!
Owen: Dirt is dirty.
Me: Dirt *is* dirty.

And now you (and Owen) know.

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My first thought: whose recipe for Bean Soup should I use first?

My mother-in-law insisted whatever recipe I use should be altered to include potatoes, so I took that to heart (I’d been gifted the Ham with the understanding that leftovers would be shared with her, so I couldn’t discount the inclusion of potatoes).

My own mother (whose bean soup I adored as a kid) also lobbied for potatoes, but said my dad liked carrots and celery in his as well.

Both good starting points that led me to the unavoidable ur-recipe for American Bean Soups: Senate Bean Soup.

For those not in-the-know, I’ll save you from clicking the link above (unless you want the recipe):

Bean soup is on the menu in the Senate’s restaurant every day. There are several stories about the origin of that mandate, but none has been corroborated.

Wikipedia’s got the goods too.

My modifications:

1. I soaked the beans for one hour
2. I used half Navy beans, half Great Northern beans
3. I made 3/4 of the recipe called for by The United States Senate
4. I sauteed my non-bean veggies (One sweet onion, one potato, two carrots, one celery rib & 3 cloves of garlic) before adding them to my pot of beans & ham
5. I used my new cookware (and not a crock pot)
6. I didn’t take any pictures. ;-(

Had I planned things out in advance, I’d have at least used my iPhone to capture the “magic” of the process and the deliciousness of the end result. Maybe next time I’ll strive to document things like Robert has, though I can’t commit to one new recipe a week.

I’ll say this about the results: both my children (who turned up their noses at the hodge-podge look of the soup) ate heartily and raved about my cooking. So I got that going for me. Which is nice.

In the end, Bean Soup isn’t the stuff of foodie daydreams, but on a frigid, snow-bound Sunday in Atlanta, I’ll take comfort over artistry any day. Which is not to say their isn’t an art to watching a pot simmer all afternoon. ;-)

I’ll try to post pictures of the leftovers at some point and I’m still working on the whole Smell-O-Vision angle, so you might just have to stop by and try a spoonful if you’d like.

Happy Monday!

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No word yet if a Disney attorney will C&D me on the blog name, but I’m hopeful that won’t happen.

Anyhow, the video is in support of the Disney Parks “Give A Day. Get A Day.” volunteerism program. You might have seen the Muppets in TV ads featuring celebrities and folks from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

Anyhow, it’s a good cause (and you can win a ticket to a Disney Park for a day by volunteering for a day). Check it out.

Get your own video here.

[Via Theme Park Mom]

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To sum up: I’m the guy who usually says “I’ll email you my contact info” after you give me your card.

So, of course, last March at SXSW, I ran out of business cards before the final day. I only brought 75 (my mistake) when I could have easily brought 200 (about the number I came home with).

The inimitable (and very helpful) Amanda Lauter told me I should use contxts (though I didn’t sign up until yesterday).

A lot of folks have suggested Bump, but I only downloaded that back in October (and, at the time, I had biz cards at my disposal).

Then I became (rapidly) obsessed with acquiring a Poken, since I dig on the collectible, cute USBs.

So now that I’m everywhere all at once, which system will win? I’m betting on good, old fashioned cards (if & when I have them).

I can’t see myself bumping phones too often or touching Pokens (assuming other folks have them). Maybe the most useful of the three is contxts.

Easy to remember.
Easy to share (via txt or a little note).
Easy to import into your phone upon receipt.

The one additional thing I’d like to try would potentially be a custom QR code stored on my phone (Like this one that points to contxts or that one). It would have the same potential hurdles as Bump, but any phone that could snap/scan my iPhone screen could get the embedded information. Like CardStar for contact info. Or something.

I don’t know what I’m getting at, since I still use a glommed-together “system” of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn & a big stash of cards in my office drawer to keep up with folks, but at least the transfer of contact data should be better.

Of course, you could also peruse Mashable’s post on the same subject if you’re so inclined.

Happy New Year!

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I’m the guy who just had to spend a week getting the wireless sharing working on the TiVos (TiVoes?) only to discover I’d broken the ability to upload DivX from PC.

I’m also the guy who just had to show the whole family how to get their iPhones to auto-download photos pre-synch.

And lastly, I’m the guy who has to try and run Linux at every opportunity. As true in 2009 (Jolicloud Pre-Beta) as it was in 1998 (Suse).

So it was that with a light heart and a devilish grin that I decided to take my perfectly functioning Dell Mini 9 (running a Dell-specific Ubuntu 8.0.4) and try to install Jolicloud. I say “perfectly” but honestly part of my desire to try something new came from the slowness of Firefox when running more than 3 tabs. And seeing as the machine only has a 4GB hard drive, the only use case I have for the thing is surfing while watching TV, so being limited to Gmail, CoTweet and one “” tab is pretty limiting.

My father-in-law had been pushing Kubuntu on me, but I found the USB creation a little wonky and I wasn’t sold on the interface. I wanted to move away from KDE (and GNOME) and focus on something truly unique for the Netbook form factor. I looked at Moblin, but the track record for supporting my Dell Mini 9 just didn’t seem quite there. I even briefly considered Ubuntu Netbook Remix but couldn’t justify staying with a Canonical project given the bugginess of Dell’s default Ubuntu distro.

Then Drew Olanoff tweeted this:

finally installing @jolicloud on my dell mini! oh im so geekily happy right now!

And I knew I had to check it out.

For those of you who don’t know @drew, he’s the Philadelphia blogger (I know him from my previous Metroblogs days) who has been very publicly battling cancer, working with LiveStrong, Lance Armstrong and using the Twitter hashtag #blamedrewscancer. He’s a hell of a guy and an avowed Mimobot fan to boot. I had no choice but to follow him down the Dell/Jolicloud rabbit hole.

I know enough shell commands from my regional ISP stint to be really dangerous, so it took me about 2 hours of fiddling to make the install USB using the Python script. I’m an idiot and a poor typist (especially on a tiny keyboard), hence the need for a distro that didn’t require me to know how to use a Terminal app or Synaptic. I don’t do dependencies: software, chemical or interpersonal.

After my brief wrestling match with install USB creation I rebooted and went through about 30 minutes of blissfully non-technical screens to install an operating system. I don’t think that’s ever happened to me before. Easier and breezier than any Windows or Mac OS install I can remember (though, to be fair, I’ve only upgraded Mac OS’s on work laptops).

I jettisoned the old OS and filled up the hard drive with Jolicloud and got a sizable space savings (around 700 MB on a 4 GB disk) and was greeted with happy sounds, floating heart clouds and full screen optimization (through Mozilla, I believe) for all the “apps”. Plus, it’ll install & run Linux apps (like Boxee or Seesmic Desktop [which is Adobe Air]) as well.

I’m no (true) technical guy (obviously) but the one-click install of web apps and utilization of the full 9-inch screen are home runs. The user experience – which doesn’t look like Windows through a fishbowl anymore – is more touchscreen smart phone than laptop and I love it.

I’m confident that if I were sneaky enough I could get it on my in-laws’ Acer Aspire to run alongside Windows and they’d have no trouble accessing their files OR using the internet – checking email/Facebook and uploading their pictures.

I’m certainly not pushing the boundaries of computing with my own netbook usage, I just wanted to feel happier about having a barebones computing device on my lap most evenings. I wanted faster performance, I wanted easier (installs, updates & mousing around) and I wanted something a little tinier (since my HD space is *so* limited).

Christmas came early. I got everything I wanted.

The only remaining issue is that Jolicloud keeps reminding me that the driver for wireless on the Dell Mini 9 is proprietary, but I guess that was the sticking point for Moblin users too. I honestly don’t care about open source or not so long as I didn’t have to jump through hoops on installation, which I didn’t.

Anyhow, I’m a much happier netbooker today.

I <3 Jolicloud

Hey and if you don’t believe me, listen to Engadget.

Enjoy your Thursday!

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I have a blog with “Muppet” in the title.
I do the whole “Separated at Birth” schtick. A lot.
I have great friends & commenters.

Second, a perfect storm (using MATH):

This comment:

Christopher Meloni looks abit like Bert from Sesame(not sure how u spell that) Street, in a kind of cute way.

Plus this email:

I’m sure you’ve already seen it, but I’m assuming this is up your alley on multiple fronts…

Multiplied by my Tumblr entry:

Telly as Zack Braff is my favorite.

Which leads us, logically, to point #3: TMZ’s Celebrity Puppets — Sesame Street Edition

There are a ton of dupes here and a few more misses than hits than I could manage with similar source material, but it’s still worth a look if, you know, Muppets OR “Separated at Birth” shit is your thing. [HINT: they're both mine].

YMMV, but still, enjoy.

Also, I don’t know that I’ve got this whole “blogging” thing down pat yet or if I’ll ever figure it out but for now I’m putting some things on the wackiness that is Tumblr, some dreck here and even more superfluous linkage and ephemera on Twitter, Flickr and the like. Follow or don’t.

(How’s THAT for an upsell?)

Humpday!

Previous incarnations of Separated at Birth:

Jeri Ryan & Cynthia Watros
Peter Lorre & Evan Handler
Lauren Ambrose & Hillary Tuck
Chuck Liddell & Sloth Fratelli (John Matuszak)
Dave Foley and Vicent Kartheiser
Javier Bardem & Jeffrey Dean Morgan
Maria Bello and Mary McCormack
Gerard Butler and Clive Owen
Christopher Meloni and Elias Koteas
Lisa Rinna and Nicholson’s Joker
Janine & Mariska

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