This blog entry is in response to this article from yesterday’s Boing Boing, where Josh Harris, founder of Pseudo.com (the startup I worked at for four years), called the company fake. An experiment in performance art.

First off. We were in no way fake, or not a “real” company. Pseudo did what we called “interactive television,” or what we now call podcasts.  We had employees, expenses (oohh did we ever have expenses), and put out new content daily. I even had a contract.

When I first started at Pseudo, we were a rather bloated company with 300+ employees running a bunch of different content channels.  Some channels did ok, like 88 Hip Hop, some didn’t really get many viewers at all. The channel I worked for, All Games Network (Wikipedia entry), was one of the top channels at the time. Live five days a week, and available on demand at any time.

My life was pretty much Pseudo. I could be found in our chatroom all day, nearly every day. I was on-air or producing 4 or 5 shows at any given time. We were a bubble startup and every single stereotype of bubble startups applied to us. A lot of work to be done by a small number of people, so everyone ended up doing some of everything.

Josh? He was rarely, if ever, in the office. He did throw us great parties, though, always with the seekrit room in back.

It was always pretty clear to us, as employees, that the company was being mismanaged. We were cool and hip with offices in an amazing location, but we had no business model.  We spent massive amounts of money on all sorts of stupid things. I remember very clearly spending one night on a business trip taste testing various kinds of sherry with a coworker of mine. Because I’d never had it before, and because I could. Loved that corporate card, and the idea of a limited “expense account” didn’t exist.

Pseudo even funded an all-female Quake tournament – Female Fragfest ’99. We flew finalists to NYC from all over the United States (one person came from Alaska), put them up in a nice hotel, took them around the city, and had our finals live in person. We got tons of press for doing it, girls playing Quake was a novelty at the time: Wired, the Village Voice, and SF Gate, among others . The tournament didn’t exactly bring in money, and it was hardly cheap to pull off.

I don’t honestly remember which happened first -  the layoffs, or Josh leaving – but it was all around the same time. Pseudo dropped to 200 employees, to 150, then finally to 75. Josh was replaced by an old-school experienced CEO from CNN.

The new CEO did his best. He reorganized the company entirely, including a really nasty round of layoffs, and changed us from lots of different channels, each with their own line up and schedule, to one channel with different shows. I became what they called an “EJ” for Electronic Jockey (get it? VJ? EJ) – and while I still concentrated on gaming, I also worked on a number of different shows, politics, wrestling, girly stuff. I filled in wherever a host needed someone to be on-air and in a chatroom at the same time.

The company still didn’t get the financial thing down, though. Kind of ironic, given that Silicon Alley Reporter was one of our shows. Instead of hunting for a viable business model, we spent a fortune covering the Democratic National Convention. It was neat, we were the only website to have a skybox at the time, but it didn’t really do anything for the company.

As with most of the bubble startups, one day we walked in and were told we could either have our final paycheck or two more months of health insurance. We were bankrupt.

It was the end of an era for us, and for many other folks who worked in startups. We had truly put our heart and soul into something we loved, something we believed in. Those of us who were still there the last day were there by choice, we'd been warned by senior management that we were probably going bankrupt months before. We were there because we believed in what we were doing, because we thought we were going to change the world, because we were young and willing to do whatever it took to make the copmany succeed.

And you know, I truly think we did something remarkable. Podcasting, ten years ago. Sure, we called it "interactive television," but same difference. The interactivity was unique at the time, but it is no longer a special feature to create a single company around, it’s expected. No matter what you’re doing, you better have open communication.

A bunch of my old shows from AGN (the All Games Network) are still online (Real player required, because, well, that was the streaming tech available at the time). Sometimes online, anyway, they don't always work. That was a pretty common thing at Pseudo.

The All Games Network still lives on, although it has gone through a few makeovers since the Pseudo days. And while I'm no longer part of the company, I still keep in touch with a number of people from our community then, and I imagine I always will.

Pseudo was very real and special to us. As for Josh Harris? Thanks for the memories, and good luck with your apple orchard.

Come ON, he just ruined the Andromeda Strain. Now he's on to yet another of my absolute favorite books of all time?? I'm starting to think this is personal.

Unlike the Andromeda Strain, Brave New World has never really been done well on film. It was made into a TV movie a few years back, but it didn't quite work. Maybe it's one of those books that will never work on camera? Like the Andromeda Strain, it isn't exactly a story with lots of action.

The Stand (Steven King) was the same way, I think. No matter how good the film production was ever going to be - and it wasn't bad - it would never hold up the way the book did. You just can't "show" fear and psychological terror on a screen.

Brave New World. Coming soon to a theater near you.

Ugh.

If you know me, you know I'm a little Broadway obsessed. And if there's any musical I'm fixated on, it's A Chorus Line (previous entry on it here). A Chorus Line is closing on Broadway, and is only running here in LA for another month or so, but that won't stop me from listening to it constantly, or referencing it endlessly. After all, why would I stop now? I've been at it since I discovered the record at the age of 5.

The other day at work, I was listening to A Chorus Line on my iPod. I was getting punchy, and set my status on MySpace to "Stephanie thinks everything is beautiful at the ballet." It's a line from a song in the musical, but not exactly one of the most popular, or most well-known lines to people not obsessed with the show. So, imagine my surprise when I got an ad on my homepage for the musical in LA:



Sometimes I think ad targeting is creepy - I wonder how on earth it knew whatever about me.

But sometimes? It just makes me giggle.

Ok, this is long, I admit. But once I opened the flood gates on this, I kept going on and on and on. What can I say – mess with a story I ADORE, and this is what happens.

I love Michael Crichton books. I don't think there's a single one that I haven't flown through, and then reread multiple times.

My favorite book and movie of his has always been the Andromeda Strain. It's one of those rare book to movie adaptations that held pretty strictly to the original script. The result is not the most exciting movie in the world, after all, over half the story takes place in a dreary lab, but I love it.

The original movie was low budget, but still had some really memorable images, including a very graphic scene of a monkey dying from the virus. The scene looks horribly real, but the directors and producers still swear to this day that although they did knock the monkey unconsious, they did not hurt it. Don't ask me how, it sure looks like a dead monkey to me.

...Spoilers follow...

To describe the plot of the original story:

A satellite lands in Piedmont, Utah. The entire town is killed, save for a baby and a drunk. The Wildfire team is called to determine what the virus is, and how to destroy it. The president tries to nuke Piedmont, but the team stops him first. They figure out what Andromeda is, but the virus renders itself inert due to its ability to continually mutate, so they just let it dissipate in the air. End of story. Epilogue: pilot burns up on reentry.

The plot of the miniseries:

A satellite lands in Piedmont, Utah. The entire town is killed, save for a baby and a drunk. The Wildfire team is called to determine what the virus is, and how to destroy it. Add in lots of backstories involving the various members of the Wildfire team, which now has five members (not four), two women, three men. A big conspiracy is going on involving the army, the department of homeland security, and the president. A reporter dude is following the story - he later becomes a target of an evil military plot to kill him. The virus keeps spreading, partially because a nuclear bomb is set off on Piedmont (hints of an additional conspiracy here - I was almost expecting to be told that an alien did it). Turns out the virus was sent from the future back to the past so it could be stopped, underwater mining was killing the natural bacteria that fought andromeda. There was a message coded into the virus container with a number and a logo (I still haven’t wrapped my head around how a virus replicates within a container – does it replicate the container? What’s a container, for that matter.). Wildfire replicates lots of the bacteria, the army drops it over the virus, virus is destroyed. End of story. Epilogue: Astronaut on the space station storing andromeda in a satellite.

First off - the miniseries just wasn't a good movie. There were an insane number of dropped or unnecessary plot points, padding for time, I assume.

This may be science fiction, but there normally is at least some "reality" to the story. this? Grass would turn brown as Andromeda moved through it like a wildfire, with a computer screen updating in real time. The big action sequence came when the military dropped bacteria on the virus to kill it "right before it spread to LA." Wouldn’t it be neat if you could SEE a virus in the air? And track it? “We have an outbreak of flu in the Arlington area today, winds suggest it could be over Georgetown by noon.” That’s just comical.

There are so many things that I had wanted to see redone in this movie that weren't even in the miniseries, it's sad. Andromeda replicating is an amazingly memorable image from the original film. The killing of the monkey, Dr. Leavitt having her seizure, THAT's what I wanted to see in this movie.

I think I would have been ok with this miniseries had it been "Based on The Andromeda Strain." But it wasn't, it was billed as a remake. If something is going to be "remade," it should be REMADE. Not changed beyond all recognition.

I'm just disappointed. I had a feeling this was going to be a mess - I mean, Ridley Scott doing a movie with no action? I never expected what I got, though. It was just awful.

So in case you were going to see the Andromeda Strain miniseries? Don't. Rent the movie from 1971 instead.

Earlier today, someone - I can't remember who, I follow too many people - commented on Twitter (tweeted, I guess) that "Twitter is the gateway drug to blogging." I wholeheartedly disagree.

Of the many, many messages I sent out on Twitter over the past week, five of them could have easily been blog entries. In fact, at least two of the messages probably would have turned into blog entries, had I not already released the emotions and thoughts around each over Twitter. That's kind of a shame, the entries would have been interesting. But I truly don't feel like writing them now. I already did, in very short form.

A blog entry requires actual writing. A somewhat decently written "article" focused around a thought. There is time involved, no matter how short the entry is, which means there is always a time delay from the moment I come up with the thought to the satisfaction of posting the entry. A computer is also required, since I don't like typing a lot on my blackberry. I used to come up with ideas for blog entries and save them for later. I'd email them to myself at home, scribble them down on a post-it, whatever. These days, instead of saving an idea for a later blog entry, I immediately post it on Twitter.

All you need for Twitter is a phone. There isn't any real writing or time involved, since the largest a "tweet" can be is 140 characters. I'm able to immediately release the thought, and forget about it. Or watch and see what other people think, which, let's face it, is what a lot of us do when we're writing anything we share with the public. I've asked questions in this blog - I'm doing it right now. I've also done the same over Twitter. We all crave interaction and responses. Why wait until a blog entry can be written when we can instantly get the thought out over Twitter?

I know I've been blogging less since I first started using Pownce, then moved to Twitter. For me, Pownce was the gateway drug to Twitter. Twitter's character limit is truly what did it for me. I can't think a lot about a tweet, it's too short. I could blab a bit on Pownce.

We all once said that "push" technology would change the Internet. Pointcast, right? Well, it took a while, but look...it happened. I always have Twitter on, and I'm always checking it. It's right there, pushed to my screen. From the major to the mundane, the 154 people I'm following on Twitter right now are always talking about something I'm interested in. And believe me, following 154 people is a somewhat small number for Twitter. I get my news from Twitter, even, my coworkers laugh at me for how often I end up saying "I just read on Twitter that...." Who needs a newspaper, when I have CNN Breaking News on Twitter?

To those of you who haven't discovered Twitter yet, beware. Remember your life before email? One day you'll remember your life before Twitter. I truly believe the impact will be just as significant. We may not always be using this one service, but the lifestreaming Twitter has created won't be going away anytime soon. We are genuinely interested in the tiny details of other people's lives, just like they're interested in the details of ours. They say everyone's a voyeur. Do I really need to know that someone is 'going to get a glass of coke?' Or someone else is 'putting the baby to bed?' Not at all. But I keep following....

Find me on Twitter as @stephaniebambam.

And I've also discovered that when I'm tired I talk like a LOL cat. Go fig.

MySpace Applications are now live!!! There are sooo many cute ones to play with (and some really useful ones too). Go check it out, have fun, and look at what's been stealing my life away for the last whoever knows how many months :D

MySpace Apps. YAY!

That’s right, my yellow ribbon says I’m a coward. Because I don’t have one on my car. I don’t have one because the ribbon movement was ‘started by the Christian Coalition’ (I heard this somewhere, so therefore it ‘must be true’), and no matter what the ribbon says, it’s still supporting something that I ultimately wouldn’t want to support. I mean, me? Support Ralph Reed? Hah!

I also don’t have any bumper stickers on my car. When I was a teenager, my car was plastered with bumper stickers. Clinton/Gore, Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails, Z100, Fight AIDS, whatever the reason, I had a sticker. I even remember running out of space on my bumper. Then I moved to New York City, and nobody owns a car in New York City.

Fast forward ten years, and suddenly, I don’t do bumper stickers anymore. The first election comes along when I’m driving a car, and I don’t even think twice about putting a bumper sticker on my car. Then again, during that election, nobody else did either – who really wanted to publicly support Grey Davis? We were just sort of forced to support him, weren’t we.

Then the ribbon campaign started. And once again, I didn’t even think twice, it just wasn’t for me. You can be sure, though, that I had a ribbon on my car during the first Gulf War – does anyone else remember tying yellow ribbons around your car’s antenna? Around trees too. Yup. I did that...then.

I moved from California to Virginia, and my surrounding political climate changed. The country may have been changing then as well, but I can’t tell if it had changed already, or was changing along with me. I went from liberal Northern California, to Republican Northern Virginia.

According to Time Power by Brian Tracy, the average American spends between 500 and 1000 hours per year behind the wheel of a car. The change in my daily scenery was undeniable – suddenly I was seeing a sea of ribbons saying everything from the usual “Support Our Troops,” to sad “Keep My Soldier Safe,” to the random “I Support My Ribbon,” to the common, “God Bless America.”

There were also the bumper stickers. Bush/Cheney was everywhere. And for this New York-raised liberal who was moving to Virginia from California – it was stunning. While I’d known I was moving into a “red” state, I was still shocked. Bush/Cheney, the proud Republican Party stickers, they really were everywhere. There would be the occasional Kerry/Edwards sticker, or a proud Democratic Party line, but they were rare. Even rarer would be alternative party stickers, which I’d seen more of in California.

Most overwhelming, though, was the sheer volume of it all. Virginians spoke their mind. True, they were mostly Republican Virginians, but they still put it out there for the world to see, on ribbons, and on bumper stickers.

This past weekend, I saw a license plate (I won’t say what state – NOT Virginia) in my garage with the plate “GOP Girl.”

Once again, I was absolutely stunned. How does someone find the courage to do that – to not only get a plate like that, but park their car in a garage in Arlington (probably one of the more liberal areas in Virginia) with that plate?

Then it hit me. I am a coward. And I didn’t know it.

I am a strong person. I know what I believe in, and will argue my beliefs until the death. I donate like a good little girl to my favorite causes, but I also believe that talk is cheap – if you believe in something get out and do something about it. I volunteered for the Kerry campaign, and I occasionally entertain the fantasy that I’ll have the time to reup my EMT certification and start riding with a volunteer ambulance corps again.

But I won’t put a bumper sticker on my car, or a ribbon, or anything else that makes a real statement. That bumper sticker, or that ribbon (the whole supposed Christian Coalition thing aside) would need defending, in my eyes, and my poor little Saturn can’t defend itself.

It was different when I was 16. Not only “because I was 16.” Because the world was different, because I lived in New York. Because I was driving a car that was falling apart anyway, that wasn’t mine, because I wasn’t driving anywhere other than to school, to friends’ houses, and home, and because I just didn’t notice what anyone else ever thought. I didn’t feel this constant restlessness at the sheer concept of putting something like that on my car – like I’d have a big huge target on my back that I wouldn’t be able to get off. I hadn’t become a conformist.

Conformist - somebody who behaves or thinks in a socially acceptable or expected way.

Yes. That would be me. And in Virginia, in 2006, having a ribbon or a bumper sticker on my car that expresses what I truly believe would prevent me from behaving in the expected way.

When I’m not on the roads, or in a parking lot, I am who I am. I act as I do – I could provide many a witness to swear that I’m more than inappropriate on many an occasion (I so shouldn’t brag about that, should I). But if it’s because my car can’t fight back, or because the great sea of parkway seems to need to be uniform, I want to conform.

This has been a strange realization to come to, that as self-aware as I think I am, I fool myself so completely. I wasn’t avoiding the ribbons because of the Christian Coalition. I never even tried to come up with an excuse for the Kerry campaign; I just never got my hands on a bumper sticker.

Now that I’ve had this realization, I still don’t think I’m going to put a ribbon or a bumper sticker on my car – at least not until I can teach my car karate so it can defend itself. And I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.

So on the roads, anyway, I’ll live with being a conformist. It’s everywhere else that really counts anyway, right?

This video is especially for anyone who's been to my apartment and doesn't believe I have two cats. MisStick is the more silvery looking smaller cat on top, Harry is the darker, larger cat on the bottom. And Harry's the kitten - he's nearly 1, MisStick is his aunt, and she's just about 3.



Meet my cats!

Add to My Profile | More Videos

Some of you may have already seen over in my brothers' blog, but if you didn't...

Last week, on 2/5, Heather and Jason brought little baby Alice into the world. She is an adorable little baby, and we're all wondering, who will get all the toys from now on - Jason or Alice? It will be fun to watch.

And, of course, she has a blog over at AliceBergman.com. Go say hi and check out the pics!!

For what I think are obvious reasons, I have no comment on this.

However, here's a link to a blog entry Ben Metcalfe wrote on it!

My life has been a little hectic lately - we've been ramping up for the Developer Platform launch at MySpace, and, as expected, things have become slightly insane.

My cats seem to love that I'm spending so much time on the couch with the laptop, though, they're fascinated by my typing, and the mouse moving around the screen. They'll sit and stare at the arrow moving around the screen for hours, it's hysterical. (note to self- I so need to upload pictures of the kitties and write an entry about them!).

Anyway! We began taking pre-registrations for our Developer Platform this past Tuesday, and are launching with a sweet party in San Francisco this upcoming Tuesday. The platform site is for developers interested in working with the MySpace APIs (including Open Social).

It's kind of sandboxed right now - it's not out to members, but applications created can be installed on live profiles for testing. It has everything a developer needs to begin building applications...documentation, sample code, test harnesses, forums where our developers will be hanging out to help, and a team blog (I'm blogging there too).

The site will remain as is for a while - long enough so anyone who wants to can create an application and have it ready to go live on day one. Even playing field for all, no "first mover" advantages, no "launch partners." If you're interested - you can prereg now, or just go to the site on Feb 5th - it'll be wide open to everyone.

I've written here before about how the world is changing, and it's a blast to watch. Wanna be part of it? You could be an application developer, independently working with our api's, OR, you can work with us. We have two openings, and I know exactly who I want. I just have to find them, and I'm hoping maybe they're reading this blog. :) The job description is below. If you're interested, go to Fox Careers and search for req FIM10590 - it'll show up as Fox Interactive.

Product Specialist MySpace

As a Product Specialist, you will be responsible for reviewing application submissions for the MySpace Application Platform. This will include, but not be limited to reviewing all application submissions for both security and technical quality, communicating with partners and independent submissions, analyze business data to identify trends, advance our application offerings, and build partner-integration and partner-management of applications.


Required Skills:

- 2+ years experience in Internet Software Development
- Excellent written and oral communication skills.
- Strong organizational and analytical skills.
- High energy, self-motivated, detail-oriented, analytical.
- Conceptual/Practical understanding and/or usage of Social Networks and/or Social Graphs

Preferred Skills:

- Programming Experience in JavaScript, Flash/Flex/Action Script, PHP, Python, HTML, CSS, AJAX
- 2+ years experience in Internet Software Development
- Previous experience in direct communication with outside vendors/clients

Those of you who've read this blog for a while know that earlier this (well, now last) year, my cat passed away due to acute renal failure. She'd been in kidney failure for years, but took a very quick and sudden turn for the worse. This was right as all of the pet food scandals were happening, and she had been eating one of the brands that was recalled. Of course, I'll never know if it was the food or not - my vet registered her as a "possible" with the FDA - but I'll always wonder.

When I got the new kitties a few months ago, as you can imagine, I was obsessive about what I fed them. California's a great place for obsessive cat owners. I bought the way high end organic stuff from the specialty stores, I mail ordered a few types, and I tried the more generic organic versions petco has.

And my cats won't eat a one.

Not that I can blame them. I don't know what it is about "organic" that translates to "crap" in the land of kitty wet-food, but for some reason, all of the wet food I tried was the same. One solid chunk of what kind of looks like meat-mousse. They also smell totally foul, every single organic food I tried stunk up my apartment. Now, if I can't stand to even smell the stuff, how can I expect my cats to eat it?

Compare the organic crap with the regular cat food. High-end, but major label, I'm still not buying cat food at the grocery store. The food smells and looks like actual meat, and the cats can't get enough of it.

Organic cat food also can go bad. I had mold growing out of my garbage can when I went out of town and the pet sitter threw the leftovers in there for a week. Regular cat food does not. From that, I gotta assume that there are chemicals keeping the regular cat food good in the can, and the mousse crap is the only way they can keep meat good without chemicals. I'm happier with chemicals than moldy mousse, though.

Pet food companies know that suckers like me believe that money is love - we don't think we should ever buy cheap things for our pets. More expensive is therefore better, and I could easily spend a small fortune on organic pet food. I think this is just another way to sucker more money out of me. I normally fall for the tricks, I fully admit that, but this time I'm putting my food down. My checkbook will thank me too.

If someone has an organic cat food brand that 1) is actually recognizable as meat, 2) does not smell worse than a litter box, and 3) does not grow mold after a few days, then I'm all ears. Until then, I'm sticking with Purina.

To finish off yesterday’s basic ingredient tips:

Milk: Another “not required” ingredient. I use it out a lot, personally, since I like harder, crunchier crusts that you don’t get with milk in your bread. When I do use milk, I use powdered milk, since it frees you up to use as much milk as you want without worrying about the liquid vs flour ratio. Plus, powdered milk doesn’t spoil, and it really makes no difference at all to the actual bread. If real milk is used, again, count the liquid as part of your water. Milk will affect the help create a softer texture inside the bread, and can darken and soften the crust.

Salt: NEVER LEAVE THIS OUT. Minor, but trust me, you’ll notice if it’s not there. You can also experiment with fleur de sel or other fancy schmancy french salts – they do change the flavor a bit. Personally, I like plain old kosher salt.

Other stuff: Berries, seeds, cheese, anything can be added to bread. Just keep in mind the texture you want in the final bread, if you're adding something mushy (raisins are a good example), don't add them until just before the first rise. Stuff like cheese is better added earlier, so it melts and can flavor the whole bread.

Now, about my favorite appliance, my bread machine.

I adore bread machines. In fact, the way I got into bread baking as a hobby in the first place was by finding some old janky bread machine for $10 at a yard sale somewhere. I took it home, started playing, and was hooked.

I only use my machine for the dough cycle. I don’t think I’ve ever baked in the machine I have now, and I’ve had it for over 4 years (still running strong too!). Why use a machine instead of a mixer? Some say it rises bread better, some say it’s just lazyness. I think it’s a combo of the two. I will never pre-warm ingredients, rise, and mix them as well and as consistently as a machine can. My dough cycle ends just in time for the final shape and rise (unless I’m feeling very fluffy, in which case I’ll rise it again), and has been keaded for at least a good half an hour. That makes my arms tired.

So obviously, I highly recommend bread machines as a good way to take some of the work out of bread baking. Just please, don’t bake in the machine. Any machine worth anything will contain a dough cycle.

What you pay for when buying higher end machines:

• Dishwasher safe parts
• Closed mixing bowl (my first one was open, which meant liquids had to be carefully placed on top of the flour or they’d seep through)
• Better handles for mixing (one of the handles on mine is permanently stuck, but that’s fairly common). Cheap machines have one, better machines have at least two.
• Programs, both pre-set and custom – Mine has a bunch of pre-sets (wheat, white, sandwich, rye, etc), but they all refer to actual baking methods. I’ve programmed my own dough cycle that contains that extra rise I like, but I still mainly use the prebuilt dough cycle
• Timer – throw all the ingredients in before leaving for work, come home to either dough just finishing up, or a fresh baked loaf of bread. You’ll pay for the timer length, almost all machines have at least a 12 hr timer. Mine’s 24.
• Baking – both shape and how well it bakes. Cheap machines bake the dough upright, like a loaf standing on its end. Better machines will bake a longer loaf. I still have yet to find a machine that bakes as well as an oven, though, and any bread baked in a machine will still have the tell tale holes in it from the mixing hands.
• See through top and light, warning when to check your dough before the final rise. Both of these are nice since you’re really not supposed to ever open the machine until the final rise is done, you want that steam and heat in there to stay consistent. That said, you always have to check your dough before it’s done. A light and glass top allows you to do this without opening the machine. I find I can’t really see through the top of mine (despite the glass), so when it beeps, I open it anyway.

It’s really not worth laying out hundreds for a fancy machine until you’ve reached the limits of a basic. $20 will get you something decent enough. If you are looking for a higher end machine, research. Every machine out there is best at something, you want the one that fits your needs. Mine’s the best for dough, not so hot at baking, which is perfect for me.

Any yeast bread recipe can pretty much be shaped any way imaginable. Just please, please don’t bake it in a bread machine, as wonderful as bread machines are (I ADORE mine), use them for the dough cycle ONLY. It’ll only take you 5 extra minutes to shape and rise the bread yourself, but there truly is no comparison.

All that said, don’t ever make sourdough in a bread machine. Sourdough starter should not come into contact with any metal until baked (although that’s something of a debate – some say you can mix with metal, so on. I figure why risk it.). If you’re making sourdough, you’re gonna be spending a good half hour to an hour kneading it by hand. But that’s fun, right?

Tomorrow, tips on shaping and baking bread.

Who knew I could go on for this many entries about bread baking? I am quite the baking dork.

...quote from a King Arthur Flour catalog

The quote fit, since here's where I get into the geeky, fun part of baking. The tweaking of the forumla that creates a basic bread to get what you want. Any loaf of bread can be made out of simply water, flour and salt, if you have enough time. The fun comes in turning those basic ingredients into the best loaf of bread ever, and understanding the science behind why each ingredient does what it does. I'll leave the science out, but here are some good ingredient tips for any baker who wants to start playing with bread.

Don't play until you are satisfied with a basic white and a basic wheat. Only then should you mess with ingredients, primarily by replacing one at a time to see what changes. Once you have THAT down - go nuts. :)

Part one of two of BamBam's Bread tips. This had been intended for one entry, but, well, I rambled. Fancy that, me rambling.

- Yeast: Bread will not rise without something to start the process. Quick breads (carrot bread, etc) use baking soda and salt for this, but what I call "real" bread - the sandwich stuff, the rolls, etc - use yeast. Storebought yeast will never, ever be able to produce the same type of bread that a true starter can, but it is fine to use. Active dry yeast can be stored in the freezer, and if you have the time, it should be proofed - soaked in warm water for 10-15 minutes before you start mixing (unless using a bread machine). Take note, a typical yeast packet contains about 1/2 tsp more yeast then most recipes require.

A starter is live yeast (the frozen stuff is just the live stuff frozen, hence the "active") that needs to be fed and maintained. It can be fun dealing with a starter, but also requires committment - an out of control starter can overflow a refrigerator, and a dead one can be the stinkiest thing you've ever smelled.

Bread can also be made without any starter - my two week amazing bread is an example - but it is using wild yeast picked up in the kitchen. ..and before you say "ew" to that, yeast is naturally in the air, everywhere. San Francisco Sourdough tastes, and acts like San Francisco sourdough because of the natural yeast in the region. One person making the same recipe with a homemade starter in two different parts of the world can end up with a very different bread. I think that's neat. :)

To answer Dossy's question from my last entry...I use storebought yeast (Red Star Active Dry) about 75% of the time, and a starter or do the two week thing with the rest. My starter is based on a SF Sourdough freeze-dried thing I reconstituted. I'd had my own back in Virginia, creating a starter really only involves mixing flour and water daily (fairly smelly and sticky flour and water), but it does take a while to get started, and I don't feel like doing it yet.

- Flour: Another required ingredient. If making sandwiches, use unbleached all-purpose flour, it'll make the bread a little denser. Use bread flour for fluffier bread. Wheat flour adds flavor, but also density. My favorite wheat bread recipe uses 2 1/2 cups whole wheat to 1/2 cup white bread flour. Nearly every whole wheat bread you buy in the store has some white flour in it, all whole wheat is tricky to do without a massive amount of everything else to make up for it. I'll get it down some day.

- Sweetener: Not at all required. White sugar and honey are the standard options, but you can use fruit juice, brown sugar, sweetened condensed milk...anything you can think of. You’ll notice the difference in both the taste and crust. If you use real sugar, watch the top, can get very dark and can burn. Splenda is the only artificial sweetener that can be baked, and has no effect on the crust.

- Oil: Not at all required, but unless making french or sourdough bread, it's probably best to use something, bread without some oil can get a little dense and tough. Oil also adds flavor and fluffiness - use lots of butter in dinner rolls.

- Liquids: Without a doubt, the trickiest part of baking bread is getting the liquid to flour ratio down right. You want your dough to be slightly tacky, but not sticky, and form a ball with a skin over the top that you can stretch, but not rip (the top “skin” helps the dough maintain its shape as it bakes). Bread should always be mixed, kneaded, then checked for consistency before the first rise – if necessary, add flour or water to get the dough to the right state. It is VERY easy to go too far in either direction, but just as easy to fix the problem – add more!

Any liquid added to the bread should be included in the calculation for how much water to use. So, if using an egg, just crack the egg into the measuring cup before measuring the rest of the liquid.

Not sure what's inspired this need to share baking knowledge, but, it is definately something I enjoy blabbing about.

More tips from "JuliaBam" tomorrow!

...quote from Julia Child

This recent article from the NY Times made me laugh.

As any true bread-lover will tell you (and I am a bread geek of the worst kind), whole wheat and whole grain bread is the only kind of bread worth eating. White bread is generally bland, over sweetened and buttered stuff left for dinner rolls, challah, and real traditional sourdough. Other than that?? Whole wheat/grain bread is healthier, ends up with a much better texture, and tastes about a billion times better. White bread's also boring to play with as a baker. The fun comes in when I play with the other stuff.

King Arthur Flour (the god of all flour companies) has made white whole wheat bread for ages now. It’s not bad, although it still doesn't act quite the same as real whole wheat. Still better than white bread, though, and marketed as a way to get the wonder bread generation eating whole wheat bread.

I love baking bread. To me, it’s a fun, enjoyable, edible hobby.

I still do buy bread on occasion, the best bread takes time and hours of love, and if I’m not going to do it right, I’d rather not do it. It’ll take me a minimum of 4 hours to bake a basic loaf from start to finish, but can take weeks if I really want to make that fantasy bread of every baker that crackles as it comes out of the oven. The perfect bread is crunchy on the outside, slightly dense, chewy on the inside with the big air bubbles that no storebought yeast will ever produce.

The ingredients in a basic loaf of bread are extremely simple. Some mix of different types of flour, and some mix of additional ingredients, depending on what I'm trying to get out of the bread (light and fluffy vs denser sandwich bread, etc). I’ll use butter or oil, eggs, powdered milk, but I rarely use sugar. If I'm making real, heavy whole wheat, I'll add splenda, and dinner rolls just have to have a ton of sugar and butter, but other then that? The whole point of making bread at home is that it isn't that icky sweet sticky storebought fluff balls they call bread.

That said, if someone is going to start baking bread for the first time, the transition is smoother if they use use some sort of sweetener, especially if they're going to try to get kids to eat the bread. Just makes the transition a little easier, and after a while, you'll find yourself making up your own recipes. Bread's one of those great things you can throw half the refrigerator into. Even if you don't make it part of the actual dough, you can always wrap dough around stuff and suddenly you've invented something.

Baking bread is easy, fun, and nowhere near as difficult as people think it is. It's edible playdough. Beat that.

Below is my recipe for my simple version of whole wheat bread. It’s light, fluffy, has a crunchy crust, and tastes better then anything you’ll find in the store.

Ingredients:

2 tsp yeast
1 ½ cup white flour
1 ½ cup regular whole wheat flour
2 tbl honey
4 tbl butter, unsalted
1/4 cup powdered milk
1 egg
½ tsp salt
1 ¼ cup water

Mix, let rise (about an hour), pound down, let rise again (about 45 minutes), shape, let rise one last time (until dough has doubled). Bake for 30 – 40 minutes on 425 in a VERY well preheated oven. You'll know the bread's done if it sounds hollow when you thump on the bottom.

Once you get the hang of the basic recipe, you can mess with ingredients - the only way to truly "fail" at baking bread is to forget the yeast (or flour, obviously). Play with shaping the dough - any bread loaf can also be made as rolls, or braided, or whatever, and play with the baking temp and time. Ideally, bread should be baked in the hottest possible oven you can get for the shortest period of time.

I'll write another entry with general tips tomorrow.

Have fun, and happy eating!!

(oh, and thanks for the unanimous recommendation on what host to use, that made my choice easy!)

It's almost comical what's taking me so long.

I can't decide on a web host. :D

My domains are split between GoDaddy and Joker, and neither of them are really going to be appropriate for hosting. I've found a few different hosts I like, from large to small, and just can't decide. They all cost pretty much the same, anyway. Some walk you through setup more than others (copying entries from an older blog, preinstalling templates, etc), but I'm not even sure how much THAT matters, given how flexible wordpress is.

It's a stupid reason, isn't it?

But I WILL get it done, moving over is going to be my "project" for the holiday break. New blog location, new year. I swear.

Anyway - if someone has a web host they adore, lemme know, I'd love some recommendations.

I suppose I kind of have to write an entry about this, given my love of the story and sort of obsession with Wicked. Plus - Wizard of Oz goes sci fi? Sweet!

For those of you who may not know, Tin Man was a sci-fi original series taking a look at the story of Dorothy and the world of OZ (or as it's known on the show - the O.Z. Outer Zone).

hrm. Trying to write this without spoilers...

The show was really interesting to me from the very beginning. We all know what happens - a tornado comes along and sweeps Dorothy and her house into the land of OZ. But this being a sci fi movie, the tornado couldn't be JUST a tornado, right? No, it's a time rift caused by an evil princess.

And the story just goes from there. The scarecrow is missing a brain, but it's because someone sucked it out of his head. The cowardly lion sure is cowardly, but he also has an amazing psychic gift. The Tin Man, well, I'll leave that one for folks to discover on the actual show.

The first two hours are definately better than the last one, which is filled with a ton of exposition as they explain everything that you've been watching for the last five hours. Understanding what has truly been going on is good, and it's certainly hard to write interesting exposition scenes, but the show really does slow down because of it.

And, for those who don't like Wicked (book or musical), have no fear. This is nothing like Wicked. Wicked starts before Dorothy arives in Oz, and ends right around when she leaves. Tin Man takes place at a different time, and is very much science fiction. I haven't quite grasped my mind around whether or not they could exist in the same universe.

Wicked doesn't mess with canon, which, honestly, was part of what it made it so amazing. It's like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - as far as you know, what you are watching truly did happen in the background. You just never saw it as part of the original movie (or play, in the case of Hamlet).

I think this does mess with the story a bit (I don't quite get how certain characters would fit in), and I need to hunt for whatever blogger somewhere did an analysis. Cuz you just know SOMEONE did.

All in all, I really recommend watching this. It may have taken me a few days to get through it all, but it was well worth it.

Lookie! Pictures of my pregnant sister-in-law.

I'm going to be an aunt! And even more important, Jason and Heather are going to be parents!! Eek!

People are weird.

Yesterday on my way to work, I was cut off by another car coming into my lane. They didn't signal (I swear, half of LA doesn't seem to know they have turn signals), and I'm guessing they thought I could see that their lane was blocked. I couldn't - my car is pretty low to the ground, and I can't really see over other cars.

The car started to move into my lane...where I was...and I honked. Then the driver actually rolls down his window, leans out, and turns around to look at me. Because I honked??

(And meanwhile, maybe 40 feet away, people were honking as they drove past the picket lines at CBS. It's not like I was the only one in the vicinity honking.)

Now, there were two bumper stickers on the car. "Give Peace a Chance," and "Remember Humanity." So, when the guy looked at me, I just started laughing. I mean, come on...don't put bumper stickers like THAT on your car and give in to road rage. Practice what you preach, maybe?

I've written about bumper stickers before - I personally hate them. But I unfortunately don't have that entry online at the moment, when I cleaned house earlier this year, I yanked the public entries down along with the friends-only ones. But, I have been blogging here since 2002, and at the moment, I wish I still had that entry to link to. I think I will have to see if I can get a bunch of those entries back up when I move to wordpress this weekend.

It'll be a fun weekend, though, who knows what this thing will look like on Monday!

Until then, drive safe, and remember the humanity, dude.

I spend a lot of my time at work on the phone talking to various people about various things. A good number of those calls involve me "meeting" someone for the first time, and it's always just a little weird. The phone is great, since I refuse to do this kind of thing over email (I'd use IM before email - some type of real-time communication), but it's still not the same as meeting in person.

I had a call scheduled with someone this afternoon - let's just call him Brad (Pitt, of course, he's in my head since he was on the Today Show this morning. mmm.). Brad's phone number was in his email signature, so when the time came for the call, I dialed that. And the conversation went like this...

me: Hi, may I please speak to Brad?
(male voice, sounds around the same age as Brad): Brad?
me: Did I dial the wrong number?
: There isn't a Brad here, what number were you trying to dial?
me: 555-555-555
: That's my number, but no Brad.
me: Oh, ok, thanks
: What, did you have a date? Did he stand you up?
me: Yeah, I guess so. Damn that Brad!
: Brad probably thought you were just another date. He didn't realize that you're a keeper.
me (by now, I'm positive it's either Brad on the phone, or a roommate): I guess you know Brad, then?
: No, there isn't a Brad here. But you had a date, huh.

And here's where I'm flat out laughing, trying to end the conversation, as he goes on and on about my date with Brad.

Conversation finally ends, I email Brad, apologize for trashing his rep, and ask him to call me.

Brad calls a few minutes later, and never mentions my weird email about ruining his reputation.

Wouldn't you have at least asked me what happened when I dialed the other number? You know, the one at the bottom of multiple emails as his signature? Why was I talking about his reputation?

But nope. Not a word about it, and we talked for a good 15 - 20 minutes. So there was certainly time to ask.

I find the whole thing very amusing, and am now fascinated by this mystery. If that guy didn't know Brad, why on earth was he going on and on and on to me? Everyone gets the occasional wrong number where the person on the other end won't shut up, but this was a little too, I don't know, familiar? I was near positive the guy on the phone knew Brad. I STILL feel like he must have known Brad.

I highly doubt I'll ever learn more about this, although I fully intend to ask Brad about it again. There may not even be anything to learn - I could have just dialed a wrong number Brad happened to write in his emails again and again.

Logic says it's nothing. But you know? I just have a feeling it's gotta be something.