I should actually write something exciting for our blog, but that will wait for another day.  No problem though–Meps wrote something good and decided to publish it today!

Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out how to get our blogs put up onto Facebook, since we got sucked into that a while back. I’ve found a plugin called Wordbooker and I’m hoping it will work well.

We’ll see what happens on my facebook profile soon enough. There is supposed to be some sort of magic where comments transfer back and forth between Facebook and the blog.  Watch out, here I come moving right into the social media of the ‘aughts, marginally still within the decade!

When we launched this website, we created a monster.

We’d been writing for Brian Guptil’s site for about 8 months, while we worked on and then cruised his 44-foot Freedom sailboat, Cayenne. When we left Cayenne, Brian revamped his site, so we decided to launch our own. We wanted our loyal fans (both of them) to still have access to our essays and limericks. Besides, we simply enjoyed writing about our travels and adventures.

Around the same time, we uploaded my entire recipe collection, so I could look up my recipes anywhere we had an internet connection. And that’s the monster.

Anyone, anywhere in the world, could also look at my recipe collection. Soon I began to notice that people were hitting mepsnbarry.com when searching for TVP meatloaf, pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, or Brazilian cheese bread. There have been dozens of hits on Palak Ka Saag, which I’ve never even made, and Quentão, which I have.

So I started to feed the monster, capturing more recipes from friends, family, clippings, cookbooks, and other websites. I’d invent a new recipe, try it out on Barry, and then run to the computer to publish it as soon as he proclaimed it “Yummy.” Sometimes, a dish would grow cold while I happily photographed it from all angles.

Earlier this year, I started publishing articles about food, and I needed a name other than “Meps’ Recipes.” That’s when I came up with “The Foodie Gazette” name.

Some of the people who use my recipes seem to think I know something. They send me questions about how to make some dish from their childhood, or whether it’s safe to leave soaked dried mushrooms on the counter for several days. (heck if I know — depends on whether you live in Mississippi or Alaska!) I’m no home economist, I’m just a writer who likes to write about food.

Today, we’re going to turn the monster loose. We’re moving all the recipes and food articles to their own dedicated website: www.foodiegazette.com.

It’s still just Meps’ recipe collection. But it has a fancy new design, the articles are featured prominently, and there will be more useful cooking links and pages. Most importantly: The search function works!

Life is full of funny surprises. I thought I’d be traveling on a sailboat in the Caribbean right now, and instead, I’m launching a website about food. But I’m headed to Portugal to look at a boat for sale in less than a month, and while I’m there, I’m sure to be eating some great new foods. So stay tuned — both of you (grin) — and I’ll post adventures of both kinds, travel AND food, on both sites for you to enjoy.

Postscript: Speaking of monsters, the limericks on this website are another thing I can’t seem to control. I even have a category for limericks about food!

Sometime this evening, Barry will give birth to a monster. Its name: Frankenstein.

It’s time for a new computer, so after shopping around, he decided to build it himself. The good news is, we won’t have to share the computer any more. The bad news is, the size of the junk box will not be diminished, because he’s had to order all the parts.

My computer-geek’s junk box is a scary place. We used to have it at our house, and the contents spilled over and crept out to take over part of a room. There were the usual RS232 cables, 9-pin connectors, and grubby mousies and pads. I once counted eight CD-drives — not CD burners, but plain old 2X drives. Not a single one of them worked.

When we moved out of the house and got rid of our stuff, Barry had to clean out his junk box. Despite the fact that none of the stuff worked and most of it was five years out of date, he had an emotional time going through the box. One of his favorite SCSI converters became a Christmas ornament, because he couldn’t part with it.

The junk box only stayed empty for a year. Last year, he started accreting again. “I’m going to Paris,” said Mo, “Do you want to take anything from my junk box?” Barry’s eyes lit up, and the next thing I knew, we were carting home a free Gateway computer and a 10-port hub. When we got home, the Gateway wouldn’t boot.

Next, we ordered a wireless keyboard from the internet. I was excited about improving the laptop’s ergonomics: Look, Ma, I can sit all the way across the room and type! The problem? I type too fast. First, the keyboard would have a tantrum and start throwing words and letters around the screen. Then, if I didn’t slow down, the screen would go blank. The cheap keyboard had mis-sent some combination of keys, so Word deleted my entire document AND emptied the recycle bin. This sent me into a major tantrum, as I struggled to maintain my composure and not throw the offending piece of cheap Chinese hardware across the room at the offending laptop. Like an incontinent puppy, that keyboard was sent to the garage.

Last week, I decided to fire up our extra computer, a really, really old Mac laptop. I plugged it in and turned it on. Nothing happened. “No, no, don’t take me to the garage! Oh noooooo, Mr. Bill!” Out it went, into the junk box.

One reason this stuff accrues is that in Seattle, you have to pay to get rid of old computer parts. The lead content is so high, it’s against the law to put them in the garbage. I steadfastly refuse every freebie that comes my way for fiscal reasons, but Barry insists that some of the stuff will work and be useful. Someday.

Maybe someday is here: Barry’s expecting to build his new computer tonight. He’s calling it Frankenstein, and he plans to keep the cost low by building it himself.

I’m afraid of Frankenstein, myself. Not that I expect it to go on a rampage, rape, and pillage. I’m simply afraid that when it’s all done, the dreaded junk box will be bigger, not smaller. For me, the real monster is the ever-growing pile of computer junk.

Last fall, Barry and I stopped in to see his best friend from high school, who lives in Columbus, Ohio. Mowgli has the most wonderful collection of toys, from old computers to new computers, music, videos, and books. He’s an expert on just about everything related to networking, so Barry asked him for a recommendation on which wi-fi card to buy. Rummaging around, Mowgli produced a little hunk of plastic and metal and handed it to Barry. In his usual low-key way, he told us it hadn’t worked right for him, so we could just have it.

I’d never seen one of these gizmos before. Every time I use it, it feels like a miracle.

In New Orleans, Brian took us to an internet cafe with wi-fi, where we could try it out. We sat at a table with tea and coffee, our laptops’ power cords plugged into the wall. The internet signal didn’t come from a wire, but through the air, from a spot near the ceiling. If I sat between the laptop and the transmitter on the ceiling, I was sure I could feel a little Google tickle, just below my right shoulder blade.

A few months later, we were anchored in the middle of the harbor at Wrightsville Beach. I don’t know what possessed Barry to put the card in the computer, but suddenly he announced that we had signal! He quickly took advantage of it, checking e-mail, updating our website. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, it vanished. We studied the houses on shore with binoculars, but there was no way of telling which house it came from.

When we took off in the Squid Wagon, Barry introduced me to a concept known as “war driving.” You fire up the laptop, put the wi-fi card in, and drive around, watching to see if there’s any signal. The only problem is that the place you find signal and the place you find parking aren’t usually the same place. The other problem is that the signal isn’t always right in your lap, where you want the laptop. Sometimes, you have to kind of stand on your head to find it, a process that involves holding the laptop over your head or propping the computer sideways with a lot of pillows. Reminds me of those cell phone commercials: Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now?

At cozy Moose River Campground in Vermont. Mary had a little wi-fi transmitter in her living room window, mainly so she could take the laptop outside and work. That meant that from some of the campsites, you could access the internet without leaving your RV. Or, in our case, your picnic table. We got a lot of work done on the website there.

The weirdest place we got wi-fi signal was on the freeway, in Halifax. Barry was driving, and I was navigating through construction. I forgot the card was in. Suddenly, I heard that distinctive little chime, and I quickly downloaded our e-mail out of thin air. The traffic cleared up, we started going 60 kilometers per hour, and the signal disappeared.

By the time we’d been on the road for a month, it became commonplace for us to find wi-fi hotspots, park the van, and just sit inside. We’d take turns reading and writing to friends, and we’d post limericks and essays. Barry would always check his online comic strip, Sluggy Freelance. We’d read Google News to find out what was happening in the world.

Ottawa was one of these places. We parked on a quiet side street and spent hours updating the website, surfing, and taking Prussia for walks. Spokane wasn’t quite as pleasant. Despite the fact that there was free signal everywhere, provided by the city itself, our parking space was on a terribly noisy highway at rush hour. The light behind us would change and dozens of cars would zoom past, shaking the van. Grand Forks, North Dakota, was also strange — we found signal near the university, but then I became uncomfortable when I realized that we were being watched. I was certain those big burly college guys were going to come down and beat us up for stealing their Internet.

In St. John’s, Newfoundland, we were sitting in the parking lot of a small shopping mall, surfing the net for a few hours. A rented panel truck pulled into the lot near us, misjudged, and as we watched, creamed a small sedan parked there. That was enough surfing for me, time to get out of that parking lot!

So where am I right now, as I write this? Not parked on 10th Avenue across from the Ben and Jerry’s truck, that was yesterday. Not drinking apple-ginger juice at Victrola, the wi-fi-enabled cafe on 15th Avenue. That was a couple of weeks ago.

I’m sitting in the dining room of my own house, the one we own in Seattle. There are a few contortions necessary — last night, Barry was standing at the dining room window, holding the laptop on his shoulder and mousing with one hand. Today, I was able to rig a tall chair and two phone books to catch it. I doubt it’s the elderly hermit next door, or the lady on the corner who drives a black VW bug. But whoever you are, all I can say is, thanks!

Right now Meps and I are in the middle of the process of moving our virtual home. While we were living with Brian, we had put quite a few bits of ourselves up on Brian’s webpage. But we are no longer living there, and upon moving out, decided it was time for our own website too.

After several days of searching for available urls, we ended up here, and we think this will be a good place. Moving is, of course, always a combination of disruption, excitement, hard work, and opportunities, and some things may be in different categories depending upon who and when you ask. Here’s some of the stuff that’s been keeping me busy these days:

• The last site was mostly done in Movable Type, but by the time we started this one, there was a new version (3.0) with a new license that was generating near universal bile and hatred from the blogging community. The licensing scheme has improved a bit, but it still seems that a simple site like this one which has two authors (barry and meps), no longer qualifies for the free copy, while previously anything non-commerical qualified for the free version. I couldn’t even find the older version (with a license we could use legitimately) on their website. While on one hand I hate to stop using good software just because I’m a cheapskate, on the other hand, I am not sure how much I want to trust my stuff to folks who keep changing the rules and costs of playing with them. Amid all the outcry about the new license, I found suggestions of alternative blogging software.
• I went looking and found WordPress as a possible alternative, and started looking at installing it. Right now, it seems a little simpler and cleaner, although I do miss the wonderfully written documentation of Movable Type.
• This gave me the opportunity to learn about PHP and MySQL, and I always love learning about new computer tools, so this was fun. Since the Vero Beach Public Library doesn’t have a good selection, I read my first “dummies” book, and found that it had some good stuff even though I hate to consider myself to be in the target audience!
• We never did get that photoblog or photoalbum that we had been planning to do someday, so I’m back looking at stuff I can use to make that job easier.
• Meps and I get to play around with designing a new site design, including using some of these new toys.

Anyhow, it is now time to stop web-surfing and playing with new computer goodies and put something up, so that’s what I’m doing now. I’m sure it will take a bit longer to finish the move-in process, but in the meantime, we’re going to get a couple things up on the site. Like a physical move, there will be a few things that stay in the cardboard boxes waiting until we get around to finding the right home for them, so be patient, we’ll get around to it eventually. There were also a couple bits we wrote earlier but couldn’t put up here since we didn’t have a blog to put them on, so they are going in, back-dated, along with our old “Travels with Meps ‘n’ Barry” stuff.