I've been pondering a smart phone since they've been getting better and it's not because I want a phone but I want a MID (Mobile Internet Device) that connects everywhere so I have constant connectivity to IM, email, web etc.. With the n800 you have to be near an open wifi access point which gets irritating to say the least. Using DNS tunnelling you can connect through many access points that are open but require monthly fees but since AT&T opened their access points at Starbucks and Barnes & Noble this is less useful. I was really excited about the n810 wimax edition but Nokia pulled it because of a lack of wimax network. Now I see Sprint advertising 4G with their Palm Pre which is wimax. We still don't have access in the Seattle area although it's coming. So I've narrowed my choice down to an Android phone (not the G1) the Palm Pre or Nokia's new MID/Phone the n900.

To be honest the Maemo OS on the n800 isn't that great but it gets the job done. It can be unstable, the apps are amateurish and it needs to be reloaded every so often so I wasn't that excited about the n900 but it seems that Nokia has actually gotten serious about Maemo. The screenshots look wonderful and it looks like they've decided to actually make an interface for a small device instead of a tiny computer Desktop.

I was in Winco the other day in the Mexican foods aisle and while browsing the dried chile peppers I took a whiff of Ancho Negros. As the aroma from the Ancho Negros entered my nasal passage an odor molecule (or two) landed on a cilia and triggered a neuron which in turn sent an electrical signal to my brain. This had a cascading effect remniscant of toppling dominoes - licorice, plums, sweet chiles and maybe even a smokey sensation all entered my imagination together resulting in  one vision forming in my mind - Black Chili! I imagined there on the cold tile floor a Chili with a deep black color and a flavor to match. A mixture of black beans and dark red kidneys, Ancho Negros blackened to within an inch of their life, roasted red bell peppers, roasted garlic, roasted tomatoes and carmalized onions. Throw in the basis of a deep smoky BBQ sauce - molassis, cumin and tomato sauce and then simmer until melded. We could add ground beef but that seemed just wrong so I'd have to go with mesquite smoked brisket with a nice deep bark. All of this formed in the thought bubble over my head and I've been itching to putting it together.

Two days ago I smoked the brisket for two hours, wrapped it in foil and finished it in the oven. Yesterday I put dark red kidneys and black beans in to soak. Today I simmered them for 2 hrs, roasted the bell peppers and tomatoes under the broiler and roasted the Jalapenos, garlic and Ancho Negros on a cast iron comal. The onions were salted and carmalized in a dutch oven and the rest was built up from there. Three hours later I had what you see here - Black Chili.

The verdict? I think it has promise.

When I'm in an airport for work I have my work laptop which has a 3G cell modem and I can connect to the internet fine (sort of thanks to poor 3G coverage). This is a great thing and allows me to become "untethered" from wifi hotspots. However if I'm not lugging my laptop around I'll have my nokia n800 on me which only has wifi. I was really excited about the n810 WiMax edition because that would allow me to have internet access in metropolitan areas but unfortunately WiMax rollout was way too slow and Nokia figured their next device the n900 would be released before people could connect with the n810 WiMax edition so they pulled it. Some time later I think this was a wise decision because WiMax still isn't available outside a limited area of the US and there are problems in the way it works with treating it as a mobile service. The Nokia n900 just got submitted to the FCC so I figure by Christmas it will be out with wifi, smaller size and 3G access. However if you have a device like an n800/n810, ipod touch, laptop or any other Mobile Internet Device that relies on wifi then the MiFi may be of use to you.

Introducing the MiFi series of mobile wifi hotspots. They come in several flavors (EVDO, HSPDA US, HSPDA EU) but all work the same way. They connect to the 3G network and act as a wifi router for wireless devices. You can only connect 5 wireless devices to it at a time but considering the intended audience I don't think that's a problem. It's so small too that you can just place it in your shirt pocket and become a mobile hotspot yourself. I was just thinking how fun this would be to walk up to someone with a laptop and let them connect to the access point but then slowly move away to see if they would start to point their laptop in different areas to get a better signal.  The real fun part would be getting them to move closer to you as they figure out which direction the signal is coming from. If you were bored you could lead them around all afternoon.

Enough of my demented mind. Here's the skinny..

This is what I get for going through old food photos. I was looking for a photo of Boniatillo - a dessert made with sweet potatoes. The further I dug the more I saw photos of dishes we used to make but  have embarrassingly forgotten.

BBQ Chicken Pasta is one of those dishes. I don't know why I stopped making it but I did. It's been long enough that nobody remembered eating it. While I was nearly finished with the sauce and had the noodles boiling Jade asked what the noodles were for and then in response to my pointing to the sauce he asked "They're going in there? That's weird". I'm not sure why it seemed weird, maybe because he already has the categories in his mind as to what's allowed or not. The way I look at it we eat BBQ Chicken pizza so why not replace the crust with another starch, in this case noodles.

So the pasta goes something like this. Combine a tomato flavored BBQ sauce with roasted red peppers, carmelized onions, chopped tomatoes and cilantro, add grilled chicken and toss over pasta. It's a very fresh vibrant dish that takes you a bit by surprise. The BBQ sauce you need to make because virtually everything in the store is going to either be too sweet, hot or smoky. Even a little bit of smoke will ruin this dish.

On first bite Jade gave me two thumbs up and Natalya said she really liked it too.

I really like my new Business directory fashioned into a  Recipe book but I've not had time to submit any recipes. There's no seperate print button like on other articles but I'll be working on that in the future. For now either print the webpage or save ink and copy and paste it into a word processor window.

Someone asked me the other day for a couple of recipes so I figured that would be a wonderful time to put a little effort into kickstarting the Recipe book so as of right now there's about 5 recipes in it. I will be adding others as I get to them. I'm only uploading recipes that I'm reasonably happy with so there won't be a lot for a while.For now here they are.

• Wheat Pita
• Desi Ghee
• Indian Style Basmati
• Persian Jeweled Rice
• Gulab Jamun

Well, I canceled FiOS. Ultimately the download speeds were 6 MB/sec slower than Comcast cable and upload speeds were 6 MB/sec faster. For running a server or VPN or getting files off your computer the upload speed is more important but for everything else the download speed is. I had some fancy screenshots of various tests but have since misplaced them so you'll have to deal with the text version.

FiOS Download speed: Consistant 25 MB/sec (rated at 25)

Comcast Download speed: Consistant 30 MB/sec

FiOS Upload speed: Inconsistant 2-20 MB/sec (rated at 15)

Comcast Upload speed: Inconsistant 2-8 MB/sec

Verizon gives you more upload speed but then kills any chance that you'll ever use it by blocking port 80. Thanks guys. The workarounds like using zoneedit to do a web forward were all slow and hackish. If someone clicked on grantmcwilliams.com what appeared in their browser URL bar was grantmcwilliams.com:8080 which isn't very pretty. I might have lived with it had it been fast but it wasn't.

So there were several strikes against Verizon and their FiOS.

1. Port 80 is blocked
2. Upload speeds not as fast as advertised 80% of the time
3. Couldn't move the router between ports like I was promised
4. I had to use their router and change my bridged wireless network configuration
5. Cost $120 more a year than the same speed of service from Comcast
6. They're Verizon

As soon as I canceled my FiOS I got an automated call that said my service was scheduled for disconnect and I needed to pay. Coincedence? Maybe, see number 6.

I'll be bringing the site down later to switch to FiOS. This is a trial to see if it's worth the extra $10/month over Comcast cable. Currently my Comcast download speed is 30 Mb/sec and upload maxes at 6 Mb/sec which is pretty fast. The FiOS connection I just had installed is 25Mb/sec download and up to 15 Mb/sec upload. The download speeds on both are predictable and consistant, the upload speeds are not. I'm not sure why this is but they range from 1 MB/sec to 15 Mb/sec. I'm not sure why this is which is why I'm doing the trial. So far dealing with Verizon has been nothing but lies but what did I expect? Companies don't just change unless their forced.

The reps said I could try it for two weeks and if I didn't like it I could cancel for free.The salesperson that called to confirm the installation appointment says this isn't correct, I can try it for two weeks and I pay for what I use. I've googled and found people stiffed with the Free Installation that turned to a pay installation when they canceled. We'll see. They also said I can move the router to any coax connection in the house which doesn't appear to be true either.

I know I've been saying it for weeks but I got tired of not being able to update the site so this morning at 3am I backed up all of my databases, renamed the old database for this site, renamed my new test database, tarred up the test web directory, renamed the web directory for this site, renamed the test directory to take the place of the old web directory, edited all the files that pointed to the test database and here we are. So far it seems to be working.

To refresh your memory I had the strangest things happening. I had whole menu's that would pop up an error 404 - article not found and that was even when the menu didn't point to an article. I had the Superblogger plugin throwing fits, my cookbook was a pain in the arse, I had no reviews module that worked.

What I did was installed Joomla from scratch on a brand new database, installed only the components, modules and plugins that I wanted (database tables went from 167 to 93!), created a theme for Superblogger, saved individual tables out of the old database and imported them one by one into the new one, recreated categories and sections and doublechecked each menu to see where things were broken.

What's new:

1. It works. That's right before it didn't.
2. All menu items actually point to something and that something actually shows up
3. Massive bugs in the old database have been cleaned out.
4. Recipebook fashioned out of a cloned Sobi II Business Index replaces poorly designed purposebuilt recipebook
5. Reviews component (not quite done though!) fashioned out of a cloned Sobi II Business Index gives me reviews that I've not had in 2 years.
6. Superblogger plugin which brings with it article ratings, comments handled by Disqus (you'll like it...), socialbookmarking (facebook, digg, reddit, stumbleupon, delicious etc..), browser bookmarking of articles, trackback URLs and RSS feeds for categories and comments.
7. Service map integrator that notifies the search engines when there's updates so they remain more up to date.
8. Search works for everything including reviews, recipes, links, articles and photos.
9. Many other things that only effect me as an Admin.

What this will do is allow me to keep my recipes online, allow me to go back to putting up reviews, give me more power as a blogger, allow you the reader to spread the word easier with the social bookmarking, allow trackbacks, more thorough RSS feeds for everything including recipes, comments and categoies and keep more up to date in the search engines.

What's not done:

I started working on the fields and themes for the Reviews modules but I'm not quite done yet. I'm also not done with modifying the templates for the blogger plugin.

Overall it will be a much nicer and more stable site to browse.