I just wanted to say that I am off to San Francisco, California. This is one place I have never been. So I am really looking forward to it. Will blog about it, if I have time there, I doubt it, most likely when I get back.
P.S. Go Georgia beat Tennessee!
Two Peas in a Pod
One of the most awesome things about the Internet is Music. Like sports and beer or Forrest and Jenny, two peas in a pod. Of course there are forces out now trying their best to, uh hum, fix it up. I will give no names just initials for fear of being carted off to court with other peoples grandmas and your baby nieces good friends, RIAA and DRM. I remember the first time I downloaded a song from Napster on my dial-up connection on America Online. I remember how excited I was when I played the song for the first time over an hour after beginning the download. Do you remember this, I sure do, it marked a day that would change the internet forever. An unfortunate day for some and lucrative for many others.
Always on Connection
It began simple enough, downloading 2 or 3 songs an evening after work. Putting together a mixed music CD. Reminded me of the mix tape days, just much cooler. I was happy about music again. I began buying CDs like they were going out of style, renewed my BMG membership and all, so that I could share them online with my friends. This was just the coolest thing ever. One day a friend of mine hit me up on AIM and told me about this very fast new internet called cable. Cable?, I said, and it is an always on connection you say. You can download music in a matter of a few minutes rather than a half hour. Hmmm, I need to look into this cable stuff. It just so happened that not so long after this conversation that I got a flier in the mail from Comcast. This advertisement let me know that Cable Internet would be available in my neighborhood soon. It would cost 44.95 per month without cable, and 39.95 per month with a subscription. I had DirecTV. I also had two phone lines and an America Online subscription, what to do?
Dishing Out the Bad News
How I wound up with cable after being intertwined with two phone lines and one ugly satellite dish on my roof was a matter of simple adjustment in thinking and economics. I gave a legitimate shot to DirecTV as they had a program that could get me broadband over satellite but I would have to add another dish to my roof, not good. Had they had some sort of attachment to add to the already unsightly dish then I would have stopped right there. So now cable was looking like a good idea to have hooked up in my house for my programming needs also. They had aggressively added channels to the package to compete with the dish so the programming change did not hurt that much, except for football season, doh! Another factor was having two phone lines. This was necessary because when you are on dial up, your main phone line was basically unreachable. Cellphones were not as readily available back then either, or maybe this process would not have moved so quickly. So I was paying over 30 dollars for my America Online account plus the additional phone line. 39.95 for an always on connection seemed the way to go. I now had to get rid of one of the phone lines because there was soon to be a lack of need for it. The unfortunate soul and I don't even think they saw it coming was America Online. I know I was at the peak of what was going on, I had lots of friends I chatted with in the chat rooms nightly, a homepage that, well honestly, I had always had, you've got mail, etc, etc..... They had just announced a huge merger, things could not have been going better for them. I called them up and had to cancel my account. I did not want to leave them behind but they would not follow me into the new frontier. It was very sad to leave that part of my life at the time. I really enjoyed America Online and had since 2.o. Did you notice the change of money from the telephone company, satellite company and internet service provider to my local cable company? All on one easy to follow bill. Of course I did not have a way to get online, except wait a second, Microsoft has automatically added Internet Explorer in there Windows software. That is simple enough. I guess I don't need to download anyone elses browser then do I? That is a whole different tale but intertwined just the same.
The Floodgates are Now Opened and I Love It!
It took me a matter of a few days to get over having to leave the old technology world I had grown accustomed to and the new one that had cool blinking lights in the form of a small box called a modem in front of me. I was hooked. One rainy Saturday afternoon, for fun and just to say that I did it, I decided to download the entire Beatles collection of music, including the English versions of the early albums. This took me only 7 hours to accomplish, including burning each album to CD. My purchased CD collection was growing exponentially as well as my library on my computer. I needed a bigger hard disk drive, I can't fit all of this stuff on my computer. I needed to buy a new computer. Ultimately music had a huge effect on computer sales as well, I am sure I was not the only one that found themselves in this position.
Napster Gets Shut Down
Sad day indeed, all of the sudden I am getting used to this awesome new broadband account and wham, they take away Napster. No need to fret though I found WinMx a week or so later, so it was as if I had never missed a beat, I was happy again. Downloading music, instead of being the cool thing to do, was by all means in the mainstream media becoming a bad thing. All of the sudden something that has been enjoyed by almost every person that has an internet connection, is now partaking in illegal activities. We are being told that we are all thieves. That we should stop this right now. I don't think anyone was listening because there were more and more of these awesome applications popping up all over the place called P2P networks, yes that is what Napster was the original of. This internet revolution moves forward.
The RIAA Sues a Little Girl
I think the turning point in this whole saga was when the RIAA sued the little girl. I don't know the outcome, but all of the sudden people stopped sharing as much music for fear that the RIAA would sue them also. They began to take people to court by the hundreds and this strategy began to work. Also, Apple brought out this new thing called iTunes and they were going to be bringing Napster back in a pay for play format also. You could download a song for 99 cents and it was legal. The biggest problem with this was that CD sales were slumping and you could buy a CD for 9.99 at the time. So why would you want to pay 99 cents for a song that you would have to download using your own time and materials to do so. The revolution tugs forward still.
iPod and DRM
Apple comes out with this kickbutt music player called the iPod. People are excited about music again, after having to go underground for fear of being sued. People are even paying 99 cents for each song and adding it to the music player. The problem with this model and the results have not been seen yet, but will be coming soon in droves as equipment begins to fail. This happened to me less than two months ago. My awesome 250gb hard disk drive decided it did not want to work anymore. No big deal except I had a large library of music I "own" now on it. I contacted Apple and they told me this was not a problem just enter this code and you can download again onto your new drive. Great, except they put in this little clause, this will be the only time I can ever do this. That certainly does not sound like ownership to me. Not only that but I can't play my music everywhere I want, like I could before, transfer from here and there, etc. I am very limited in what I can do now with this music I now "own". They call this DRM. I keep reading stories about how hated this stuff is, yet it keeps popping up as the way of the future.
Where to Next?
This is a good question, right now I have gone back to using a different service in which I pay for the music but at a much discounted rate called allofmp3. I am able to download music that plays anywhere I want it to again, I am having fun with music once more. I guess fun with music might be the key word because I know the government is working hard to shut this site down as well. There are some cool things online with streaming music such as Pandora or Last FM. I just yesterday added this cool Ajax player on my blog called Streampad. I think right now we are in a weird place, in between where we need to be. iTunes has some competition coming around the corner called the Zune by Microsoft. It is also a DRM player. I think that we as music lovers are stuck right now trying to find the right answer. I don't think the models presented by Apple or Microsoft are the answers for the future. They are definitely making good money I am sure, at the expense of us the listeners and the RIAA's lawsuits. But ultimately who is going to win this war to make music fun again, the consumer who actually listens to the music or the people who are forcing all of us to pay ridiculous amounts of money for songs that we download using our own time and materials. I guess only the future holds the answer. So here we are, not using America Online anymore, two phone lines, or a satellite dish. I am paying for one cable bill that now includes telephone service, by the way, yet another story. Net Neutrality is a bunch of bull that is being fought in the government by all of these entities because of the shift in monies and the different uses of the "tubes". I am buying much more powerful computers with giant hard disk drives to handle all of my personal media needs. I have an account with two services that charge to download music. I am not as happy as I once was either. I am lost in a world that is trying to still find itself. I bet my story is very similar to your story also. I just want my two peas back in the pod, how about you?
Ribs for Dinner
One of my favorite things to do is barbecue on my grill. The most popular item that I cook for friends and myself are my ribs. Man do I like ribs slathered with a sweet and spicy barbecue sauce. When I first began cooking on a grill, around 15 years ago, I wanted to master ribs and here is what I have come up with as my favorite way to eat them. I am including an easy way to cook the ribs as well as my favorite barbecue sauce recipe. Enjoy!
Shopping List
This section is real easy. I prefer the St. Louis Style cut ribs (this is Missouri Style anyways right?). I like them because they trim the useless part of the ribs off leaving only the meaty ribs themselves. You will need salt and brown sugar for the ribs. See the recipe for the barbecue sauce for additional items.
Cooking the Ribs
I like ribs to fall off of the bone when I cook them. An easy way to make this happen quickly is using the boiling method. I use a large pot and cut a full rack in half. You can fit two racks in a large potato pot. I like to boil the ribs for around 2 hours with a break in the middle to change out the water. The only thing I put into the water is a little bit of salt. Go ahead and preheat your grill (I like a medium low heat) just before you finish the boiling of the ribs. The ribs are done boiling when you go to lift the ribs with a set of tongs and some of the bones fall out. Once you have completed this step, put the ribs on a large platter and add a dry rub mixture of 1 part salt to 4 parts brown sugar (you need to pre-mix this in a small bowl). Do this to both sides of the meat.
The Barbecue Sauce
After you change out the water and are half way through with boiling the ribs, this would be a very good time to make the barbecue sauce. The recipe I am including is one that I have used many times and I absolutely love it. It is a good mixture of sweetness and spiciness (May be to hot for those that are wimps). It comes from the book, Barbecue Bible!: Sauces, Rubs and Marinades and the original credit comes from the Kansas City Barbecue Society. (Once again these are Missouri Style).
The Recipe
6 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup molasses
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons dark rum (I like Captain Morgans Spiced Rum)
2 tablespoons yellow mustard
1 tablespoon liquid smoke
1 tablespoon chili powder (recommended pure)
2 teaspoons black pepper (recommended freshly ground)
2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
4 cups of ketchup
salt (recommended kosher or sea) and black pepper (recommended freshly ground)
1. Mix all ingredients in a large, deep, non reactive sauce pan, except for the ketchup and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Cook uncovered until all ingredients are dissolved stirring constantly for about 5 minutes. Stir in the ketchup and bring to a boil, the ketchup tends to spatter so stir it well. Add salt and pepper to taste.
2. Reduce heat slightly and gently simmer the sauce uncovered until you get that dark, thick barbecue sauce flavor you are looking for. (Tasting will become addicting I promise!) This takes about 30 minutes. This sauce is usable right away or you can place it in jars and use it for several months. It makes 5 cups. (Good enough for a heavily slathered 2 racks of ribs and some left over for dipping)
To the Grill
Bring your platter full of ribs and your barbecue sauce out to the preheated grill. I like to use medium low heat so that I can spend some quality time outside on the grill and drink a couple of beers! Place the ribs on the grill and slather both sides of the meat with sauce. Place on the grill with the meaty side down. This is a good time to go and grab a beer and clean the platter or replace it. The goal is to get a nice caramelized almost burnt look to the barbecue sauce on the ribs. Once you get this look which should be around 10-15 minutes into grilling you can go ahead and add some more sauce for the final 5 minutes of cooking (I cook with the meaty side up for the final glazing). Make sure you leave some sauce for dipping. Enjoy!
Eating the Ribs
This will get very messy, that is the nature of barbecue ribs. I promise if you are a fan of Ribs you will enjoy this simple to follow recipe and so will all of your family and friends that enjoy ribs. Please feel free to offer any feedback you may have or offer some other recipes in the comments. Until next time, enjoy.
