Stop by the beverage aisle of any supermarché and you’ll be confronted with row after row of the stuff. They’re much like the syrups you find in American coffee shops for flavoring Italian sodas or lattes, but here the selection and availability are unbeatable. Litchi, mango-passion-pear, mint, peach iced tea, cinnamon, grenadine. The syrups are so popular that there are 3 brands of cherry at my Carrefour–thrifty store brand, mid-range, and one with packaging and a price tag verging on luxurious.

There are even two choice bottles of syrup in the teacher’s lounge at the school where I teach–just another staple like the coffee and tea. Today two little girls came in to pick up a lemon syrup with water for their teacher, who had requested it while on recess duty. It’s just like grabbing a soda, but with way more flavor choices.

At first I was wary of the syrups, but now that the weather’s gotten hot and chocolat chaud is no longer my drink of choice at cafés, I’m smitten. Grenadine syrup with water (called simply a grenadine) is a sweet treat, mint syrup in sparkling water is refreshing though shockingly green, and a demi pêche (light beer with peach syrup) is a big favorite around here.

We should start playing around more with syrups in the US. Torani (the big Italian soda brand) makes quite a few. I doubt they’re all available at your corner store, but you can order big bottles online for $6.95 each. And they have everything from pink grapefruit to creme de banane and anise. Treat yourself to a bottle and experiment. Mix white wine and cassis syrup for a kir, relive your childhood with a cherry and coke Shirley Temple, or make your own fun combinations. What about a tequila sunrise with something other than grenadine? Just be sure to share your ideas with us!

Then I saw this today on my Epicurious. (Yes, I know 2 posts in 2 days about Epicurious, but what can you do).

I thought I was getting a jalapeno or serrano chile, but it turns out I was getting an anaheim chile.  Next time, I’ll know to add more and I’ll throw in the seeds too which are the part of the chile that packs the most punch.

Thought I’d share in case any of our loyal readers happen to be shopping for peppers in a foreign language.

I’m not saying it was awful, but I imagine this is what it’s like to use the Internet in a country with heavy amounts of censorship (China? Singapore? Cuba?). Then again, the communist approach to the Internet was not without it’s benefits.

I sent more emails to friends last week than I did in the entire month before that.  My fantasy baseball team (The Toulonians!) have come back from the dead and surged from 10th place to a mighty 7th. And. . . well ok, I still don’t have a job lined up- but I’m closer than I was 5 days ago.

I’m not saying that my Internet diet caused Albert Pujols to go on a hitting streak, but this week was a Lacanian break in the flow that is my Internet use. In non-nerd speak, I had to stop and think about what I’ve been doing instead of just doing it. I realized that surfing the web is something I’d been doing out of habit.

On the other hand, some of those Internet habits turned out to be good habits that I sorely missed. I have unfairly vilified tabs. Yes, they can be a distraction, but it’s not as if someone at Firefox created them just to provoke my latent tendencies towards ADD.  Tabs and extra windows are can be delicious side dishes to my web surfing main course. A number of times this past week, I wanted to look up to enhance whatever it was I focussing on, whether it was to get an additional detail, fact check an email (was that Ethan Hawke or Jude Law in that movie?) or get some context about something I was reading without leaving that page.  The New York Times reports French sent the ship The Mistral to Burma? Isn’t that based in Toulon? Turns out it is. And browsing through all the jobs on Craigslist is a great way to find jobs I wouldn’t have thought of, but without CNN in the background, it’s also pretty dull stuff.

There are some new habits I developed last week that I hope I keep.  Checking my email, the weather and sports scores just once a day is plenty.  Once a day I enjoy them- a pleasant diversion.  More than that it becomes a chore.

On the other hand, wikipedia never hurt anyone. Maybe this weeks blog posts will have a little research in them.  And while I managed to read a whole book last week with all the time I wasn’t online, I can’t wait to add that book to my profile on goodreads. 

Although it was painful, I’m glad I took a few days to step back and think about the way I use my time. I just hope I can translate this experience into a sense of moderation- because internet deprivation is no good at all.

Here in Toulon, it’s easy to figure out what is in season.  There’s a farmers market 6 days a week here.  Every time I walk through the market, there’s one item that seems to be at every stand.  Whatever it is will be cheap and beautiful.  By the next week, it might be hard to find anyone selling that vegetable at all. 

In American grocery stores, finding what’s in season can be a little trickier- since the produce section at Safeway sells basically the same items year round. If it’s not in season, they’ll truck it in from somewhere it is or find a green house or warehouse that still has it. America might be defined by the availability of tomatoes in December or Pumpkins in July.  Still, your best value and best quality can be had by knowing what is at it’s peak.

A lot of food websites will suggest general things like “Summer means Strawberries”, but the US is just too big for that kind of broad advice. Summer might mean strawberries in California, but it probably means something else entirely in Maine.

Enter my new favorite seasonal veggie finder. I love it.  Thought I’d share.

A true child of the ’80′s, popcorn and microwave have always been synonymous in my mind. But popcorn made on the stove is incredibly easy. It’s also way cheaper than the microwave stuff, and, without the fake butter syrup, healthier to boot.

Instead of smoothering our snack with butter, we’ve been making up our own fun topping combinations. So far we’ve gone spicy with soy sauce and chili powder, sweet with sugar and salt, and local with a healthy sprinkling of herbes de provence. We tried vinegar with a little less success–the flavor was overpowering. Next up is lime juice and cilantro. We’ve also thought about making use of some of the spices we’ve brought back from our travels–what better way to remember Budapest than Hungarian paprika popcorn? Of course you could always go a little more traditional with caramel or cheddar cheese. But take a chance, it turns out almost everything is good on popcorn!

A quick stove top popcorn recipe:

Coat the bottom of a pot with vegetable oil

Put the pot over medium high heat and add 3 kernels of popcorn

Cover the pot and wait for the 3 kernels to pop–when they do, you know the oil is hot enough for popping

Pour in a quarter cup of corn kernels (this is about the amount of popcorn you find in a normal sized microwave popcorn bag, so adjust accordingly) and put the lid back on

The popping should start pretty quickly

Give the pot a shake every now and then to make sure all of the kernels make it to the bottom of the pot

The popcorn’s done when you’re waiting several seconds between pops

Important: When it’s done, remove the pot from heat and keep the lid on for around 20 seconds. The corn will keep popping.

Then remove the lid, toss with seasoning, and enjoy

Please comment if you come up with any other good popcorn topping suggestions–we’d love to hear them!

Not reading my usual blogs or facebook was liberating. It made me realize that the attention I lavish on these pages is sometimes more from compulsion than true enjoyment. While I do like keeping up with friends, I don’t like feeling like it’s a homework assignment. Of course I’ll still be stopping by tomorrow to see what I missed, but hopefully I’ve learned from the experience and won’t waste all of my time with these sites. As for my biggest weakness? It turned out to be The New York Times. I can’t feel too bad about that, even if many of my illicit visits were to the style section.

The only problem is that it’s really tricky to go through and manually tag photos with exact gps coordinates.  But I’m convinced that this is a technical challenge someone should be able to solve.  And, finally, a couple of solutions are appearing on the market.

The first approach just sticks a gps reciever onto a standard digital camera. This feature started popping up on digital cameras from second tier manufacturers last winter. But despite the recent price drops, a gps receiver still isn’t cheap.  In an attempt to keep the price down, these manufactures stick low quality gps recievers on some very mediocre cameras. The result is an expensive, gimmicky camera with only one application. Not a big selling point for me.

I just learned about a second approach today. That’s what inspired this entry. The BBC show Click  aired a review of the latest generation of “eye-fi” memory cards for digital cameras.  These are standard memory cards with a built in wi-fi transmitter. It’s the same feature that Kodak built into it’s now discountinued Easy Share One.

With a wi-fi transmitter, you can upload photos to your computer or directly to a photosite like flickr with no wires. The transmitter automatically detects when you’re near your computer or some other open wi-fi connection and starts sending. The camera stays in your bag, but the photos end up on your computer. It’s a neat feature, but not one that justifies the extra price tag that it carries. 

However, the new “eye-fi” cards also record information about the wireless networks around them each time a photo is taken. When you upload your photos, it compares the networks around each photo to an online database and comes up with an approximate geographic location. It’s not a GPS coordinate, but it’s a cheaper way to get something pretty close. Genius!

Wi-fi transmitters are dramatically cheaper than gps recievers. And because it’s built into the memory card, not the camera, you can tack it on to your existing camera for $20 or $30 and you can bring it to your next camera when you upgrade.

I’m waiting to hear from folks about how well this actually works. Obviously, this isn’t going to work for a serious hiker taking pictures in the middle of Yellowstone (not much wi-fi out there), but if it helps me relive the best moments from my next pubcrawl then I’m all for it.  

A final note: our cell phones already have all this information, but my camera phone sure doesn’t keep track of it. Why don’t phone makers make it happen?

Apologies for the lack of research on this, but I’m on a web diet at the moment.  Might post an update next week.

So with that in mind, I thought I’d share some of my new French favorites in honor of this week’s French media kick.

Le Bonheur, Mademoiselle, Berry

Berry’s album Mademoiselle is my newest find. She calls herself “folk-rock”–I’d call her sound pretty, stripped down, and vocally driven. I like the songs Le Bonheur, Mademoiselle, and Belle Comme Tout best. Le Bonheur wins because of the cool, orca whale like sounds at the beginning of the track (is it feedback? a violin?)

This is Berry’s first album. While it’s been out since February in France, it doesn’t seem to be available on the American version of itunes yet. However, Berry’s Myspace page has 2 of my favorite songs. Check them out if you like Laura Veirs.

Je n’aime que toi, Les chansons d’amour (bande originale du film), Clotilde Hesme, Lois Garrel, and Ludivine Sagnier

Je n’aime que toi (I love only you) is a poppy song about a threesome from a recent French movie musical about the same. OK, it sounds, um, very French, but I highly recommend both. The movie was called “Love Songs” in the US and had a limited release there in late March. See if you can find it. And if not, the song is available on itunes.

Femme libérée, Gilles David Orchestra

This song isn’t actually new, but it’s the kind of cult classic that plays at least once a night in bars–and pretty much always inspires a sing-a-long. The version I bought is from the Gilles David Orchestra, but it was originally sung in 1984 by Cookie Dingler. The catchy refrain is “être une femme libérée, tu sais c’est pas si facile” (basically “being a liberated woman isn’t so easy, you know”). I’m not quite sure how to describe the song, but maybe something like a cross between “These boots were made for walking” and “Girls just want to have fun.” Then throw in a little Spice Girls for good measure. Try it, you’ll like it. You can even find video versions if you search for the song on YouTube.

Loser, LP1, Plastiscines

I first heard this song in the new movie “l’Heure d’été” (also recommended). The Plastiscines are a young, all female pop rock group with a sound something like that of The Ramones or The Strokes. They play short, guitar heavy songs with catchy riffs. There’s nothing deep here (none of their songs are longer than 3 minutes), but it’s fun, danceable rebellion. Check out the video here.

I’d never used Linux before, but I had some important fantasy baseball transactions to make so I gritted my teeth and dove in.  And it wasn’t so bad.

In fact I even kind of liked it. The computer I was on was clearly a dinosaur, but it ran almost as fast as my recently deceased laptop which was struggling under the bulk of windows XP.

Linux isn’t nearly as pretty as Windows Vista or Mac OS X, but it’s so much free-er.  As in completely.  Add on AVG’s anti-virus software, konquer or firefox, thunderbird’s email app, and Open Office and I’m good to go without spending a dime on software. 

Since the death of my laptop, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what I want in my next computer. After a lot of thought, I might finally be ready to make the jump to Linux.

The alternative: Windows Vista, Norton Anti-Virus and Microsoft Office add several hundred dollars to the price of a new computer.  They are fancier, slicker and prettier.  They’re also the industry standard so they play well with other software and hardware.  However, with a little DIY work my free software should be able to handle most of those tasks just as well.

I think (anyone know?) that some of the major computer manufacturers are beginning to ship computers with linux already installed. Maybe Linux is finally ready for semi-technical users like me?

There’s no doubt that making the jump would be an adjustment.  When it comes to Linux, I have a lot to learn.  On the other hand,  all the stuff I’m used to is there. It’ll just take me a while to figure out exactly where it’s hiding. I’m cheap enough that I’m willing to take the plunge.

I’d love to hear if anyone’s actually done it. Anyway made the jump to linux or open office? Is this stuff still too complicated for anyone other than serious computer nerds?

1 day down. so far, so good.

Today felt a little bit like being on a diet or quitting smoking- not that I’ve every done those things. But I definitely noticed the absence of those tabs. And I’d really love to check my email again just to make sure that job applied for hasn’t gotten back to me. But they’re 9 hours behind me.  Which means they’ve only been open for business about 45 minutes today. So I guess the odds are against it.

I was also surprised how much time I spent online today even with only 3 sites. I didn’t even get to the New York Times. I killed an hour on email and at least an hour more searching for jobs.  But I spent that time actually sending email and cleaning up my inbox- not just clicking refresh. So I feel good about that.

The only mild cheating was asking other people to look things up on the web for me. It felt a little silly, but I followed the letter of the law.

So far, I think this challenge is good for me. I just wish I could go onto facebook and tell my friends about it.