We had a great time at Dianne’s tonight seeing again old friends from the Be, Inc. days. The funny thing is, that except very few ex-Be engineers still at Apple or Nvidia, everyone else seems to have migrated at Google. Trey Boudreau was there too (if you ever used the Matrox driver under BeOS/Zeta, you’ve used Trey’s code) and cooked some delicious chili for us!

We also saw George Hoffman, whom I interviewed a few years ago. Except being a brilliant software engineer, George is also a strong a-cappella singer and it is this talent of his that got him on the Mythbusters episode that will air on April 11th. Don’t forget to watch!

We are going to a BBQ party tonight and so that’s my contribution. They are an exceptionally good idea for buffet parties (guests can get some from a serving platter using toothpicks). My mother always makes some when we celebrate name days or birthdays.

Ingredients (for 2)
* 1/4 cup of bread crumbs (or the white part of old white bread)
* 250 gr ground beef
* 2 shallots or 1 onion
* fresh (preferably “italian”) parsley
* 2 garlic cloves
* salt & pepper
* oregano
* olive oil
* canola or vegetable oil

Execution
1. Finely chop the coriander, shallots and garlic in very small pieces.
2. In a big bowl place the ground beef, the chopped ingredients above, salt, pepper, oregano and 1 tbspoon olive oil. Then, add the bread crumbs on top of the mix. If you don’t have bread crumbs, you can use the white part of old bread after having wet it with some water.
3. Using your fists work the mix until it becomes one for 1-2 minutes (just like you would if you were making bread by hand). Then, move the mix on one of the sides of the bowl.
4. Take very small amounts of the mix and then using the palms of your hands, shape small balls. Place them on the other side of the bowl. Be patient, it can take a while.
5. In a large frying pan heat some olive oil and canola oil. Remember, meatballs need quite a bit of oil to get cooked through. When the oil is hot, place your meatballs in the pan and cook them for about 8-10 minutes until brown. You will need to turn the meatballs 2-3 times during the time of their cooking so they cook from all their sides.
6. Remove the meatballs from heat (make sure you don’t take too much oil with it as you removing them from the pan). Serve hot with french fries. Alternatively, you can heat some pasta sauce in another pan and then put the meatballs in the sauce and cook together for 1-2 minutes. This variation can be served with either fries or pasta. Enjoy!

“The idea that Linux is primarily a community-based project based on the work of thousands of independent, idealist hackers died a quiet death at home on March 27. ”

What Steven (who loves Linux btw) writes in that article is all true. But instead of having painting it with that gloomy tone, he should be happy that Linux comes of age. I mean, is it really a coincidence that the first time that I feel that Linux could work for me is only when Ubuntu includes easily-installable proprietary software? I am sure that there are purists out there who despise non-Free software, and for these purists there are still a few [under-]developed geek distros to use. For the rest of us, the vast majority, Linux comes of age as far as I am concerned. And it’s a good thing.

Yay! The UPS guy woke me up this morning at 9 AM (I was in my silly pink pajamas), but cool stuff, he brought me the very popular Nokia N80. First thing I did after my eyes adjusted to the daylight was to download the NSS hacking utility, change the internal product code of the device to match a Greek one (the phone came from Asia you see, although it was set to English), and then I reflashed it. Now, I have a Greek-English N80 Internet Edition that supports VoIP and all. I am hoping to give this phone to my little brother after I write a review for it.

I had send my brother the Motorola M1000 (my review here) some months ago, but the reason I want to send him one of these Nokia WiFi-capable phones is VoIP. It costs us a lot of money to call each other via the regular phone lines, so I am hoping the usage of GizmoProject will bring that cost down to zero. I know my mother would want to chat all day long and she currently can’t because of the cost. The only thing my (electrician) brother would need to setup is DSL+WiFi now that it’s available in his area. Hopefully he will be able to get DSL because professionally he doesn’t do well lately (he hasn’t been called to work in the last 2-3 weeks).

Back to the N80, it is one of the best phones ever released, and in my opinion, the only thing really missing is A2DP/AVRCP support. It’s well worth the (specially reduced) price we paid for it.

On other Nokia news, I spent a lot of time last night playing with N800’s new Rhapsody service. Really cool. I still have that Pink song in my head, “U + Ur hand”.