Sunday, April 26, 2009

Neat Acapella

The Voca People do some neat acapella

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6EYrqIn0yI

http://lidorproductions.com/vocapeople/

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Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Tech Tuesday - Internet Television

Viewing television shows and movies over the internet seems to be gaining popularity. I wonder how this will affect the future of television and cable stations?

Some places where you can do your own viewing over the net:

Hulu
http://www.hulu.com/

You Tube
http://www.youtube.com/shows

AOL
http://television.aol.com/in2tv

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Food Friday - Cupcake

Cupcake - MI00104

19th century New England had two definitions for the word cupcake (or cup cake).

The first was simply a name for miniature cakes. Cake batter was poured into cups or mugs if they were the most readily available containers that would work. Any variety of cake in this smaller size could bear the name cupcake. Some of the British called them Fairy Cakes.

A second definition of cupcake is one that I recently baked. It is a cake made of a few simple ingredients that I’ll outline below. I was told that although this will produce one regular sized cake rather than several small ones, the name cup cake was given because of the easy to remember measures (one cup of this, two cups of that, etc). The ingredients that I was told are as follows:

One cup of butter
Two cups of sugar
Three cups of flour
Four eggs

One issue that I had was that I did not know what temperature would be best or how long to bake the cupcake. I was told verbally how what ingredients to use but should have questioned it further. I imagine in days gone by that people must have used an open hearth and just watched it carefully. I tried 350 degrees (Fahrenheit) for 30 minutes.

The cake came out with a great texture around the edges, but it was more dough like in consistency near the center, and was not as tall as the edges. The flavor was good. It was a flavor that was not too different from a teacake, or butter sugar cookie. A small piece was plenty, as it was very filling.

I just wasn’t happy with the overall texture so may make an attempt at this again later. I might add 2 tsp of baking powder and vanilla, maybe a cup of milk and a pinch of salt and cinnamon. We’ll see.

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Saturday, April 04, 2009

Struggling with Yahoo 360

I run this blog through a couple different places. One of them is yahoo 360. For those of you who view this blog there, I first off apologize for the fact that I am not keeping up well with handling the few messages that I do receive there. Why?

It is always taking an exorbitant amount of time whenever I access almost any part of yahoo 360. Several friends have related the same to me. The web pages often time out and are sometime misdirected. I've had these issues for quite some time. They seem to be even worse as of late.

A bit of its history: A while back, Yahoo considered a different social network called Mash. Mash was not widely known as you got an account by invitation only. Yahoo decided to shut Mash down on Sept 29, 2008 and they claim that Mash never had an impact on your yahoo 360.

The word is that Yahoo is no longer supporting Yahoo 360 and will be merging 360 info into an updated version of yahoo profiles. I don't know what the final look will be on the new Yahoo profiles, but as of yet I don't see how blogs fit in. The profile page seems to load easier than 360 did for me, but I don't know yet if I'll care to keep running my 360 material through the new profile system.

Yahoo has made cut backs in other areas of their services, too. Their customizable music station has now been changed. It reminds me now of the set up at aol. They play good music, but you can no longer create your own stations and edit them. Yahoo has eliminated their on line file storage called yahoo briefcase too. I'm not faulting yahoo for any of this, as I'm sure it's a challenge to balance incoming advertising dollars against operating expenses. Yahoo's free email give an excellent service, but in my humble opinion drowns you in advertisement. With all these services, the problem is too many cuts can drive people away from using their services altogether.

Back to 360....
Between this uncertainty of how things will change and my difficulties posting and updating, there is a chance that an occasional item might of mine might not make to 360, be it a new entry or some reply on my part. I will continue to use 360 for now, and if I decide to stop using, I hope to give a last post and info on where to read my postings elsewhere.

Until then.

http://blog.360.yahoo.com
http://www.yprofileblog.com

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