A few photos I took with the cell phone because I was bored waiting for the train to Boston:

It’s called a ‘Scavenger’ soup because it’s made from whatever I could scrounge from the pantry and fridge that worked well with lentils and bacon.

I started with the idea that I wanted to make a lentil/split pea soup but didn’t have a ham hock laying around (who does).  I did however have bacon. I figured it was pork (same as a ham hock) but had a little more salt so I’d cut back on that.  Then it was a scavenger hunt to find other things to go in.

It turned out really good!  Good enough that I am constantly sneaking a forkful from the fridge!  And yes I said forkful, it’s that thick.  In fact, I’ve thought about adding a little more liquid, maybe even some cream, and making it into a dip.  Sadly the Patriots are out of the playoffs so it will have to be a movie styled dip :)

Anyway, on with the show!

Ingredients:

2 carrots peeled and small diced

1/2 small yellow onion, small diced

1/2 – 1lb bacon or your choice, diced .  (I used about 3/4lb  regular flavored bacon)

1lb green lentils.

2 bay leaves

Salt and Pepper to taste.

2 tablespoons Canola Oil

2-4 cups stock (chicken, veg, whatever you prefer)

0-2 cups water (Basically, you need 4 cups of liquid, whatever ratio you want of water to stock, I only had 2 cups of stock available)

Directions:

In a medium stock pot heat the oil and lightly saute the carrots and onions.  You just want to soften them a bit, just enough to release their flavor and aroma, since they are going to get cooked further later on.

Once the carrots and onions are ready, toss in the lentils and saute them for about 2 minutes, then add the stock and/or water and toss in the bacon, bay leaves and a pinch of salt.

Bring it to a boil. Cover, reduce the temp to a simmer for about an hour or until the lentils start to break down into a porridge like consistency.  Not all of them will break down and it will give you a nice smooth soup.

As I said, it’s thick.  If you want to make it souper just add more stock or water.  Also, if you just use stock you’ll get more flavor. As well as flavored bacon (applewood, hickory, etc…) will give you a different flavor.

Today marks the culmination of 2 months of work on the newest, and potentially most complex channel launched by litl to date: Facebook Status.

I know what your thinking, “We already know about / use Facebook.  How is this different?”  Remember last time when I mentioned that there are *3* viewing modes to the litl webbook; Card, Laptop mode and Easel mode? Well the Facebook Status channel  is the perfect showcase channel for what can be done on the litl, 3 completely different way to display and play with the same data and show it in interesting and unique ways.

Most facebook apps just show you text and an icon.  We took that idea, put it in a blender, mixed in some good old fashion vaudeville fun, added a dash of  city life and pour in a tablespoon of WTF. The result is the sidewalk!  Using the sidewalk you can view your friends status updates in a completely new and fun way, a way that hasn’t been done before.

It’s also a great example of how a developer can authenticate with external websites and quickly absorb XML or JSON data.

I will admit, I’m biased about this channel, that’s because I’m the one who built it. No matter how impossible you might think this is, it’s all coded in AS2 running under Flash Lite.  Yes, it is.  Is to!  Seriously, there is no chicanery here.  No secretly packaged or hidden AS3 SWF buried somewhere doing all the work behind the scenes, it really is AS2.

It’s not using any third party code other than XML2Object. Even the authentication code is written from scratch, it had to be since Facebook officially dumped AS2, and the other libraries out there would have need extensive modification to work.  In other words, it’s all home grown and to a large extent very modular.

There is so much you can do with just this one application.  It really does show to difference in thinking that has gone into building the litl webbook.

How cool would it be to watch your Facebook feed on the television, possibly as a backdrop to a party!  Or better yet, have the feed showing via a projector at a conference and displaying peoples facebook comments about the event!  Way cool!

So by now I hope your asking yourself ‘how do I get this awesome channel!’.  For that you need a litl webbook.  If you already have one your in for pleasant surprise: it’s free!  Just go to the card catalog and download.  That’s it. Well, and make sure you have a facebook account.  Once you log in your goo to go!

For the last few weeks things here have been very quiet. The reason is multi-fold but essentially it boils down to a.) I’ve been insanely busy at work and 2.) I’ve been restricted by an NDA.

Last week parts of that NDA got lifted and now that the litl has started shipping I can finally talk about some of the stuff I’ve been working on.

I won’t go into details about the hardware or software, you can read about those in posts from lucas and scott).

I want to talk about ‘channels’ a litl bit (see what I did there :), from a different perspective than my co-worker kathryn did.

Channels are a completely new way to see the web and in some cases interact with special sites and applications (weather.com for example). The most unique thing about them is how they look to the general user. There are essentially 3 states for each channel: card view, laptop mode and easel mode. Laptop mode is self-explanatory, so I won’t bother. Card view is what you see when you are in what amounts to the litl ‘homepage’ or desktop. A bunch of little index like cards laid out in a grid.

Easel mode is (in my mind) the coup-de-grace. It is a mostly passive way of viewing… well, everything. It’s *mostly* passive because there is a wheel and button that lets you interact with the device as well as a remote that provides the same functionality (albeit from a distance :).  Want to read an RSS feed automatically? No worries. What about watch videos or view pictures? Again, no problem. Easel mode allows for this. In fact it’s *designed* for it. So the channels are built in such a way that they can be used in a completely passive manner. All WITHOUT you having to do anything but press a button and flick a scroll wheel.

So to sum up a little, each channel has three different, and in some cases distinct, was to display or represent data.

The channels are powered by Flash Lite, which means AS2.  Yes AS2 is a nightmare especially if you’ve spent the last 2 years working in AS3, however our player has been sent out to the Pimp-My-Player studios over at calsoft and came back with things like Bitmap Caching and hardware-accelerated H.264 support.  And in order to do that pimpage, we needed to use Flash Lite, hence AS2.  It’s a whole circular wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey thing.  The channels are capable of  consuming any type or data and format RSS, XML, JSON… anything that AS2 and Flash Lite can handle.   I will say, considering the limitations, we have managed to do some truly amazing things.

With that said, it has been fun (and frustrating) to build some of the things that will be coming out over the next few weeks (and no I won’t mention any names, but stay tuned…). There is a lot more coming, things like a channel SDK which will be opened up to any and all third party developers to name one, but we are waiting for a few things to fall into place (such as the open screen project and the next gen of the Flash Mobile platform.).  So if you like Flash and love a challenge, then keep your eyes and ears peeled.  Good things, they are a comin!

Boston, meet litl.

Come say hi to litl. This Wednesday, 10:30am-12pm at Starbucks (755 Boylston St. Boston).

The litl webbook gets you online and more. It’s an internet computer that works great with your favorite websites. But the litl also flips over to create a new view of the web. Our intuitive interface and no-maintenance approach make it simple and carefree.

So I’m working on the finishing touches of this when I notice that Wordpress 2.8 is out and this site is still running 2.7.   Well!  That simply muct not be allowed so I promptly upgrade.  And break it.

For some reason I begin having delimiter errors every time I create or attempt to edit a post or page.  It didn’t happen before so it must have been something I did during the upgrade.  So I download it again.  And… it’s broken.  Okay.  Phase 2.

As anyone who has worked with WP in the past knows, when all else fails start deactivating plugins one by one till the problem goes away.  Then you have your culprit.  Except I even went so far as to delete the blasted things and still didn’t fix it.

‘Well now’ I say to myself.  ’I upgraded 2 other site recently to 2.8 and they both work fine.  I’ll just copy them over and change the theme and plugins’

So I did.  And it didn’t work.

I then go back to the other sites that are running 2.8 and start playing around.  And guess what? THEY ARE BROKEN!

At this point I’m totally confused and lost.  I’ve even tried a clean install, new DB, everything short of wiping the hard drive and starting over.  It DID cross my mind!

So I do the one thing men hate.  Ask for help.

Turns out it’s all because I had a trailing forward slash at the end of my siteurl.  GAH!

For those that already knew the answer, bite me.  Seriously :)

Anyway, it’s 1:2 in the morning, I get up at 6 and I’m dog tired.  Enough blabbing, time for sleep.

In cleaning up and updating some of the parts of the site I found this page buried in an old version of the DB. I’ve restored it but kept it out of the nav for now. I need to restart this

Discmoon