Dan Lyons, (aka the Fake Steve Jobs) talks at Google about being the fake Steve Jobs. Long video, but entirely worth it.

Via ProBlogger

Every Veteran’s day, since 2004, I give thanks that I no longer play in a marching band. Those parades always sucked even more than the Christmas parades.

The moka pot makes surprisingly good espresso, and I highly recommend for anyone looking for an economical way to get espresso. However, it is also good to get a milk frother with it.

I am currently unsure of the correct frother to get, given the variety of available products. Personally, I want one that is very similar to my espresso maker being that it must not require an outlet and it must be relatively portable. I’d like to take it camping. That’s right.

The cheapest item I found is available from Ikea, and can be found used for as little as $3. It takes 2 AA batteries. There are a bunch of these types of frothers around, and they’re pretty much all alike. Some come with metal stands. Woohoo!

 Next up are the glass and metal press-pitcher models, available for $9+ These work similar to french press coffee makers.

The last type of frother I’ll be covering is the stovetop steamer you see here on the left, available for $60+. The premise of this is really simple. You put water in it, put it on the stove, it makes steam, you put the tip of the wand into a cup of milk, you get hot foamy milk.

Tip: When choosing a milk, skim milk froths the quickest, but whole milk is the traditional choice among coffee aficionados.

All of these milk frothers can be had within your budget. With a combination of a $5 moka pot and a $3 frothers, you can rival the quality of a $300 espresso maker and far surpass the quality of any cheap-o steam-driven espresso machine. You’ll have rich and delicious espresso and moist, foamy milk, and a couple extra bucks to buy a coffee grinder with.

Today never ended. I met with clients, then went up to a house in Hermitage that DBF is helping a friend’s mother sell. The realtor hadn’t been to the house in 2 months, and neither had the people DBF hired to finish the painting or cut the grass. The windows to the house were still hanging open. In the words of Myron Cope, “What a debacle!”

After dealing with the absentee realtor, we went out with another of DBF’s friends, and DBFF’s daughter. I found a nice moka pot for $5. I’ll have details tomorrow on how they are at making stovetop espresso. I found a 1. liter carafe over at the Goodwill store for $1.50, a nifty iHome pillow for $3 off, and a tin of Bentley’s Jasmine white tea for $4 . Good fun is tasteless. Good tea is tasty.

DBF napped and I drove on the way home. For the record, I don’t like how VW golfs handle, and his is a diesel with a temperamental 5-speed manual transmission to boot. I only stalled it twice!

I’ve gotten into the habit of, while driving down crosstown boulevard, to take a careful look at the parkway ahead of me and, if I see three lanes of solid congestion, I take the boulevard of the allies home through Schenley Park. It’s 11 and I’m tired. The melatonin must be kicking in.

So I was just about to say that Vista isn’t all that bad, but something interesting happened. My PC froze up for about five minutes, the hard drive went crazy, and the half-finished blog entry I had started disappeared. So I figure that whatever is bad for me may as well be bad for a conglomerate’s PR: Windows Vista is no more reliable than Windows ME. I will retract that statement after Microsoft sends me a refund. Not a refund for the software license, a refund for the hours I spent using it, at a rate of $10/hr. Anybody want to get in on this and go class-action style?

Actually, both my laptop and my PC crashed. The desktop crashed twice… in the past half hour. The problem is that I have to choose between Linux - software that was put together by a bunch of unpaid professionals, Windows - software that was apparently put together by paid amateurs, and Mac OS 10 - software that does exactly what Steve Jobs says it will. There really isn’t a win anywhere in there.

NaBloPoMo - So, being more behind than usual on my cyberculture news, I forgot that NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo started. Also, I think we need a new word for acronyms that occur in camel case like the aforementioned events, NaDruWriMi, EvDO, etc. I think we should call these camel-case acronyms Acrocamels!

Lastly, Blogfest 12 was a hit. I met a lot of fabulous people, and will have to dedicate some time tomorrow to stalking them.