Happy Sunday to all! Here are some videos I saw this week that I liked:

Well, I’ve been working on it since May, playing around, and trying some new things, and the new design is finally done! I wanted to move away from my simple, blocky, somewhat bland work that I’ve done in the past, and I rather like it. There’s definitely something to be said for simple web designs, and I am proud of a number of the sites that I’ve done, but it’s always fun to play around. I like the collage idea at the top, and the blog banner especially. I apologize for tooting my own horn here, but hey, this is my blog after all. The only other thing I will mention is that I know credits are missing for the vectors at the top of the pages and the icons on the contact page. I’m currently in the process of moving back to Lehigh tomorrow, so the sources are packed away. They will be up in the next week. I used the work of several great vector artists, and awesome icons (fairly and properly, of course), and you all deserve credit. So hang tight.

At any rate, check out the new design over at my main site!

So, in the recent Woot-Off, I managed to score a tube (bottle?) of Bacon Salt. For those that don’t know, Bacon Salt “is a zero calorie, zero fat, vegetarian, kosher-certified seasoning salt that makes everything taste like real bacon.” (From the label) Sounds pretty good to me. I only have the Original flavor (it is also available in Peppered, Hickory, and Natural), but I put it through a number of tests. Here are the results:

• Sushi (California Roll)
  My first experiment met with suspicion by my peers, but I was surprised by how good it was. I sprinkled a little bit of the seasoning on the top of a piece and ate it. It actually added a nice smoky hint to the flavor of the sushi. I could see this easily getting out of hand, though, and would be cautious as to which kinds of sushi I tried it on.
• Kettle Corn
  My next test was on some Orville Redenbacher’s Smart Pop Kettle Corn. I was very disappointed. I had hoped that the sweetness of the kettle corn would help counteract the saltiness of the seasoning, but it was no help. The end result was WAY too salty to really taste anything. The Bacon Salt Blog has a recipe for Bacon Salt popcorn, so that might be worth a try. In that recipe, the Bacon Salt is the salt added, so there should be no worries as to it being too salty.
• Scrambled Eggs
  I’m not going to lie, and I apologize for sounding arrogant, but I consider myself quite the scrambled egg cook. I have been known to be very adventurous with my mix-ins for scrambled eggs and really know how to do it. I also love cooking my eggs in bacon grease after cooking bacon. That being said, Bacon Salt is nothing short of amazing when cooked into scrambled eggs. I added it right after pouring the scramble into the pan, while everything is still liquid, and added a little bit more to areas that seemed lacking while it was cooking. The result was something that tasted pretty much exactly like eggs cooked in grease, just didn’t leave me feeling like my arteries were completely clogged. This was definitely the best of my experiments, and the one I will most often repeat. (As a side note, try sprinkling Cinnamon Sugar on your plain scrambled eggs – I’ve been doing it since I was very little and it’s AWESOME).
• Sandwich
  It was lunch time. I made a sandwich with Turkey, Ham, Salami, Bologna and Cheese on wheat bread with Mayonnaise and Dijon Mustard. It was good, but just for fun, I opened it back up and sprinkled some Bacon Salt in the middle of the sandwich. Similarly to the sushi, the flavor was subtle and really nice. I enjoyed the smoky, bacon-y flavor that it added to the sandwich. It tasted very much like I had put bacon in the sandwich. I was worried about the consistency, as if I was going to be crunching on the Bacon Salt, but I was pleasantly surprised that it caused no such issues.
• Eggs Over-Easy
  I was eating eggs over easy, and had my trusty Bacon Salt with me, so I sprinkled a little bit on the piece that was on my fork. It wasn’t bad per say, but it wasn’t great. I think it would be better to cook the seasoning into the eggs, like I did with the Scrambled Eggs.
• Bacon
  For my final test, I took a piece of bacon, and sprinkled some Bacon Salt on it. That’s right, I flavored my bacon with that which makes things taste like bacon. The bacon salt did nothing. It didn’t effect anything! Not the taste, the consistency, the saltiness, or anything! My bacon was no more or less bacon-y. It was still its normal Bacon self.

Thus ends my first run of Bacon Salt Experiments. It seems to me that the seasoning is best used when cooked into the food, especially for hot foods. I must say, however, that I am quite pleased with it and am looking forward to trying the other flavors. Things I still want to try: French Fries, the Popcorn recipe, lining the rim of a margarita glass with the salt, and grilling meat (chicken or steak) seasoned with the Bacon Salt.

The Bacon Salt Website has more recipes and ideas for use of your Bacon Salt, so go check them out (I know I will be).

I first used the internet on my own at the age of 9. My parents set up an AOL account for me with the screen name gmdog9 (my choosing: I was nine!). I believe I was given the most locked down level of security and restrictions on the account – I could only visit a certain handful of sites and I may or may not have been able to IM with friends. The point is that at this point I began learning about internet safety and how to act when I was online. This was back in 1999, before Y2K, before social networking was big, and before people really knew how to let kids act online. There weren’t as strong guidelines for parents about what to let their kids do or not do online, so I can imagine there was a great sense of paranoia (having seen some news reports about kids on the internet from that time, I think I’m right).

The biggest thing my parents continually drilled into my brain about internet safety was “Don’t give out any information, and don’t give out your name” – the internet equivalent of “Don’t talk to strangers.” And, like “Don’t talk to strangers,” the idea of not giving out personal information has evolved for me as I have grown older. I mean, take a look at my current situation: I have a website with my name, picture, and school all on one page. I have my email and instant message screen names publicly posted and available, you can read all about my education and work at my LinkedIn profile, you can see more about me at my Myspace page, and (although it is somewhat locked down) people can see my phone number, date of birth, on-campus address on my Facebook page. Though I would probably never post my home address or more private information such as SSN or Driver’s License information online, there is considerably more information about myself online now than there was on my AOL profile when I was 10 or 11. Back then, I posted Blink-182 lyrics and had green tildes around a list of my best friends. Hardly anything that could tell you much about me.

These days, I post quite frequently to my Twitter page, updating people about what I’m doing, where I am, etc. Honestly, if someone REALLY wanted to find me, they probably could. The whole idea of Twitter itself sort of goes against what I was taught when I was 9. Imagine if I had set up a little web page on Geocities and constantly dialed into AOL to add a new line at the top that I was going to the playground in the park, or that I was eating dinner. My parents would have been shocked, and probably order that I cease immediately, lest one of those predators decided to follow me. That’s not to say that I’m not careful these days; I most certainly think before I post and never post with GPS locations of myself, but, as I said, I’m probably findable.

So, we have this new standard that’s emerged. We now deem it acceptable to post certain information about ourselves online for everyone to see: information that, 10 years ago, would have been considered unsafe to post. What happened? Did Chris Hansen round them all up and get them off the internet? Of course not, there are still thousands of predators online and they’re probably still quite active. Do we feel safer now that we are older, as if no predator would prey on us because we aren’t 9 anymore? Perhaps, but if you blog, if you speak your mind on the internet, if you post to forums you can potentially make enemies: people who think radically differently from you and may decide that they want to come after you because they dislike something you said. Imagine if I posted critically about Scientologists – I would run the risk of having them come after me as they have so many others. And I’m sure they could. Why, then, do we feel so safe? It’s because we’ve found a nice balance between giving too much information and not participating. It’s easy to be really safe on the internet: delete all your accounts and only read news sites, buy shoes on Zappos, and check the weather. But by doing that you will miss out on all the fun, social things there are to do online. You’ll miss out on connecting with your friends through Facebook, joining conversations on blogs, or sharing photos on Flickr. It is important, then, to find that appropriate balance where you aren’t making GordonDiggsSocialSecurityNumber.com but you’re still interacting and communicating.

Let’s move back to the title of this post: why should you keep your kids away from Twitter? I think that even though this new standard has been established, it’s up to grown individuals to find that balance for themselves, which means that we still need to tell kids “Don’t give out any information, and don’t give out your name.” It is important to acknowledge that if you are letting your kids use the internet, they need to be aware that not everyone online wants to be their friend, and that there are predators and other bad people online. I could imagine, then, that the idea of social networking, where you are posting information about who you are and what you do, could be confusing to children who are being taught to be very restrictive in their habits. The answer, as usual, is not to hide Facebook and Twitter from kids, but rather to treat them as if they were alcohol: tell them that these are grown-up sites that they can use when they’re older. Just as you may offer your 9 year-old a sip of wine, dictate to them one of your Twitter posts, or let them update your work info with you on LinkedIn. That way, they will get a taste of what it’s like and have something to look forward to for when they get older. They will understand that they don’t need a Twitter account at the age of 9, because there aren’t any other 9 year olds tweeting. And, if you decide that your child shows enough maturity and understanding to get into social networking, have constant conversations with them to make sure they are being safe, because the internet CAN be a dangerous place, especially for younger children and teenagers. They key, as always, is communication and honesty. Communicate and be honest with your kids: it worked for my parents.

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If you’re an Apple Developer like me, you probably got really excited when you could install the 3.0 Beta Firmware on your iPhone / iPod Touch. If you’re even more like me, you loved the Spotlight feature and the Copy and Paste, but hated the fact that the upgrade REMOVED YOUR ABILITY TO LOAD THE MUSIC APP, THUS MAKING YOUR IPOD NOT REALLY AN IPOD. Funny how that works. At any rate, if you’re EVEN more like me, you spent hours trying to figure out how the hell to downgrade. Apple will tell you that once you install the 3.0 firmware, your device is locked into “Testing Mode.” Well, guess what? THEY LIED. That’s right: you can downgrade the firmware! Here’s what you have to do:
1. Get the 2.2.1 Firmware file (it will be an ipsw file). You can find this by looking on Google – Apple may provide it as well. However you do it, just make sure you have that file.
2. Connect your device to your computer so that it shows up in iTunes. (this is the hard step)
3. When it shows up in iTunes, go to the Summary tab and hold down Shift (on PC, Option if you’re using a Mac) and click on “Restore.” You will see a dialog that will let you select a specific firmware file.
4. Select the ipsw file you just downloaded and click OK. The older firmware will be installed on your device. And it will come back like a new iPod

Notes:
- This will erase all the data on your iPod, so be prepared to sync all your music, apps, etc. back onto the device.
- I am not responsible for any damage or problems this causes to your device. You perform this process at your own risk and take full responsibility for your actions.
- If you have any questions, post them below and I’ll answer them!

Cookie Monster has warmed our hearts and made us laugh.  Here are the 3 best Cookie Monster moments:

And of course:

I don’t like spam. I don’t think anyone really LIKES spam, but every once in a while, a piece of spam that gets through that is kind of awesome. You may remember me writing about one such piece some while back (I unfortunately cannot seem to find the post). Well, here’s another that just came through. Click the image to see the email:

Here are some videos from my trip to California! You can see them in HD over at my Vimeo Page, but here they are now as well:

Driving on Route 1 from Gordon Diggs on Vimeo.

Driving on Route 1 South from Gordon Diggs on Vimeo.

Walking Through Venice Beach from Gordon Diggs on Vimeo.

Waves Crashing on Cliffs from Gordon Diggs on Vimeo.

Walking into the Ocean at Santa Monica from Gordon Diggs on Vimeo.

Venice Beach Street Art from Gordon Diggs on Vimeo.

this: