Broccoli Chicken Dijon

Here’s a recipe I think we’re going to try out on Monday night. Looks good – and it’s South Beach Phase 1,2 & 3 acceptable.

Broccoli Chicken Dijon

1/2 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth
1 Tbsp. lite soy sauce
1 Tbsp. olive oil
4 cups broccoli florets
1 clove garlic, minced
1 lb. boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into thin strips
2 Tbsp. Dijon Mustard

MIX chicken broth and soy sauce; set aside.
HEAT oil in large skillet on medium-high heat. Add broccoli and garlic; cook and stir until crisp-tender. Remove from skillet; cover to keep warm.
ADD chicken to skillet; cook and stir 3 to 4 min. or until cooked through. Add broth mixture; mix well. Bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium-low. Stir in mustard until well blended. Return broccoli mixture to skillet; mix lightly. Cook until heated through, stirring

Star Wars Mashup

Brian Bailey’s son has put together several Star Wars Mashups with the site, mashup.starwars.com.
Pretty funny stuff. Good job Ben. Keep it up.
I’d still love to see a mashup with Josh Wink’s “Higher State of Consciousness” playing for the soundtrack.
Get a little R2D2 rapping going on. You know what I’m saying in full effect?

Faith like a mustard seed


Well if you live in North Texas you’ve likely seen the yellow flowers of the Mustard seed across the country side on back roads around the region.
Most of them are getting mowed over now or being overgrown by weeds, but my buddy “>Michael has some interesting observations he’s learned from his own mustard seeds. (Mike sent me some of my own mustard seeds a few months back but I believe they were lost somewhere along the move to my new place)

  1. The Mustard Seed I received were small but not minuscule.
  2. These seeds sprouted in two days: faster than any other seeds I have seen!
    (Perhaps faith can sprout as fast when nurtured?)
  3. This plant thrives in full sun.
    (Faith thrives in the light of the Son!)
  4. After several weeks of steady growth, the plant has sprounted little yellow flowers and is spreading out into other areas of my herb garden, with branches growing over some of my other plants.
    (Perhaps the Kingdom of God is steadily gaining ground and branching out: “God’s Aggressive Love Finds a Way.” Voice of the Martyrs

New Firefox under development

Firefox v.3 is available for testing now.
Code named Gran Paradiso Alpha 1 the new browser is expected to bring a number of improvements to my favorite browser:

  • Cairo is now being used as the default graphics library, affecting all graphic and text rendering
  • Cocoa Widgets are now used in OS X builds
  • An updated threading model
  • Changes to how DOM events are dispatched (see bug 234455)
  • Changes to how object elements are loaded (see bug 1156)
  • Changes to how web pages are painted
  • New SVG elements and filters, and improved SVG specification compliance

I don’t recommend downloading the trial version unless you plan on doing a lot of programming with it – but it’s out there if you’re interested.

Internet radio providers could pay millions

As hopefully you’ve noticed, on the banner at the top of my blog, we’re still waiting/hoping and fighting for our rights to broadcast music on OrangeNoiseRadio. New rules could force Webcasters to pay higher royalty fees and additional administration fees – fees that are much greater than those paid by satellite and terrestrial radio counterparts.
RealNetworks, Yahoo, Pandora and our hosting company, Live365 have told Congress that the new administration fees could cost $1 billion a year. That’s a lot of money going to waste if you ask me.
From CNet:

Here’s how they say they derived that figure: When the CRB decided earlier this year to change the rules for Internet broadcasters, it also decided to levy a $500 minimum annual fee per Internet radio “channel.” SoundExchange, the non-profit music industry entity that collects the royalty and other fees on behalf of record labels, says that minimum payment is supposed to cover administrative costs.
But since some of the larger Internet radio services potentially offer their listeners hundreds of thousands of unique “channels” (RealNetworks’ Rhapsody offered more than 400,000 in 2006 alone, according to a company spokesman), the companies view the ruling as forcing them to multiply that mandatory minimum payment accordingly (for Real, that would amount to $200 million).
Such an amount would far outpace the $20 million in total royalty fees collected by SoundExchange from the Internet radio industry last year, the CEOs note in their letter. And besides, it’s not even clear that those payments would go to artists, as royalty payments do, the companies argue.

So we have until July 15 to hopefully save Net Radio.
What can you do?
Visit SaveNetRadio.org to get informed and to send letters and/or call your congressional leaders and get them to back and co-sponsor The Internet Radio Equality Act, H.R. 2060, and S. 1353.
If you’re in the Waxahachie area, Joe Barton is your representative. You can call his Washington office at: (202) 225-2002 or send an email via his website: http://joebarton.house.gov.
Also, anywhere in Texas, our U.S. Senators are Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn.
Call Kay Bailey at: (202) 224-5922 or contact her via her website: http://www.hutchison.senate.gov.
Call John Cornyn at: (202) 224-2934 or via his website at: http://cornyn.senate.gov.
Your help is greatly appreciated!