Left Brattleboro around 11:00 a.m. for the approximately five-hour final driving leg to our destination. We spent a little time finding some excellent local Vermont cheddar cheese in several varieties, including a super sharp that was aged four years and was so dry it was amazing. Best cheddar I’ve ever had. The milder one we bought was the equivalent of what they sell in most groceries as “extra sharp,” so it was damn good too. Great mobile lunch as we entered Maine.

Getting off on the Coastal Route (U.S. 1) northeast of Portland, we didn’t see the Atlantic until we got into Camden, Maine, a lovely (and touristy-busy on a Sunday afternoon) town on Penobscot Bay. Our motel, the Mount Battie, is north of Camden (“The Jewel of the Maine Coast”) near Lincolnville Beach. It’s run by a couple from New York who are outstanding hosts. My family is staying in the “family suite,” which includes two bedrooms, 1 1/2 baths and a pull-out bed/couch. The kids’ cousin Liam is also staying with us.

The vacation in Maine is being paid for by Doreen’s dad and her uncles Ed and Jim. When their mother, Helen Everitt, died in 2009, they talked about doing something special with what remained of her estate, and came up with the idea of inviting everyone on a trip. So we find ourselves on the Midcoast of Maine in a lovely motel with a view of the bay, and beaches, shops, galleries, restaurants and pubs galore. It’s a very generous thing for the brothers to do, and I’m appreciating the chance not only to take a great vacation, but also spend it with many members of Doreen’s family who we rarely see.

More to come….

A short drive to Cooperstown, New York to visit the National Baseball Hall of Fame. It was fun to see the historic bats, balls, uniforms and other items on display, most of which were connected to baseball moments that, as a lifelong baseball geek, I was familiar with. Doreen asked me if I’d learned anything I didn’t know before. I couldn’t think of anything major, but just seeing a bat that Ty Cobb once used or a warm-up jacket Jackie Robinson once wore did bring out the kid in me. We noticed that a lot of the middle-aged men visiting the Hall had childlike smiles on their faces. I suppose that’s why the Hall exists, and why there was a line down the street to get in by the time we got there at 11:30 a.m.

After leaving Cooperstown — if you live there, you have to like baseball or at least appreciate how important it is to your town, otherwise you’d become homicidal with all of the tourists and youth baseball teams that invade every weekend — we took several county roads and state highways through the mountains around Albany and then east into Vermont, a state I’d never been to before. Bennington looked interesting, but we wanted to get to our motel and some dinner before sundown, so we kept on across the bottom of Vermont on state route 9. The mountains were rather imposing. Living in a fairly flat part of the country, it’s a challenge to get used to the up and downs and curves of two-lane mountain roads. I pulled over a few times to let the natives by so they could resume going 60 miles an hour down an 8% grade with a 180 degree switchback at the bottom. Woo!

Arriving in Brattleboro (“The One and Only Brattleboro”), another town that would be worth exploring if I had the time (by the way, Vermont has a guy named Brian Dubie running for governor, which seems really appropriate for this politically offbeat state until you realize he’s a Republican. Then again, he has an issue statement on his website about “Growing Vermont’s Green Economy,” so who knows?), we ate at 99 Restaurant, where kids eat free if the Red Sox win. Since they beat the Tigers Saturday afternoon, I was looking to cut my bill in half at least, but apparently the offer only included young children, not the adult and quasi-adult I brought with me.

Now we’re off to find some Vermont cheddar for Andy before we cross into New Hampshire (which, in honor of WBZ Boston’s former late-night host Larry Glick, I always pronounce “New Hamp-Shire”), another state I’ve never been to. Then into Maine (ditto) and on to our destination for the week, Camden.

Launched the Maine trip yesterday with a marathon 580 mile drive to Johnson City, New York (the “Home of the Square Deal.”) After finishing last minute preparations and dropping Raven off at the boarding kennel (the “pet resort” is what I’m calling it in my mind so I can imagine her having a really great time while we’re gone), we took off around noon. Since two of our party lacked the necessary international security documents to cross into Canada, we instead took a southerly tour of Lake Erie via Toledo, Cleveland and Erie, Pa. (Why do all the mileage signs along I-90 need to say “Erie Pa”? Are the sign makers afraid we’ll mistake it for Erie, Ohio or Erie, New York? Or the lake itself?)

We also ate pretty high on the hog, baby, stopping at two McDonalds and one Burger King (where I was so disgusted by the restaurant itself and the thought of eating any more fast food in one day that I settled for a Little Debbie apple pie from the attached convenience store.) There’s something about fast food restaurants connected to gas station convenience stores that triples the disgustingness. Avoid at all costs.

Stayed the night at the Traditions at the Glen Resort in Johnson City. Got a nice last-minute rate on Expedia, a cut above a discount motel but at about the same price. Kids just came in, though, and said the breakfast was not that great, so I may skip that for now. I’m preparing to change to my planned Maine diet, which is lobster appetizers followed by lobster main course followed by lobster cupcakes for dessert. If I can figure out how to include lobster in my drinks, I’ll be doing that too.

We’re off to Cooperstown today. I hear there’s something to do with baseball there. We may have to stop and check that out.

Brattleboro, Vermont is the place we shall rest our heads tonight. Later!

You’ve probably heard of Pandora, the streaming music service. Maybe you already use their free browser-based service, which uses the Music Genome Project to find music you might like based on an artist or song you enter. I’ve found many new artists that interested me using Pandora over the past few years.

Due to copyright and licensing negotiations last year, Pandora was facing some pretty drastic increases in the fees they pay to the licensing organizations. The new fees would have been very stifling to internet radio, including Pandora’s service. Fortunately, the rates ultimately adopted weren’t as draconian, but it did mean that the free service had to limited to 40 hours a month per user. While many Pandora users stay under that limit, those who need more music can pay Pandora an annual fee of $36.00 for unlimited use of the service. This premium level of service, called Pandora One, also includes a higher quality of playback (192 Kbits per second), a handy desktop application (which eliminated my frequent mistake of closing my browser in the middle of song), no advertising and five continuous hours of music without having to touch a button on the app (the free version requires you to let the system know you’re still listening more frequently, since Pandora is paying by the song).

Since I have Pandora on pretty much all the time in my office (or on my iPhone when I’m out – yes, there’s an app for that), $36 is a bargain. If you haven’t used Pandora before, give the free service a try, and if you like it, consider supporting the service by upgrading to Pandora One.

Big Al at Bless You Boys suggests that Matt Garza’s no-hitter against the Tigers last night should have an asterisk because so many of the hitters in Detroit’s lineup were fresh outta Toledo (or perhaps should be headed there?), including immortals Will Rhymes, Ryan Raburn, Don Kelly, Gerald Laird and Danny Worth. Well, yeah, the lineup was a little weak. But Cabrera, Damon, Jackson and Boesch were all in there, and they went a collective 0 for 11. Surely one of them could’ve picked up at least a Texas League single off Garza?

I know Big Al was frustrated watching the game. I was, too, especially after the terrible call on B.J. Upton’s stolen base and Jim Leyland getting tossed for arguing the call. It wasn’t close, and watching the replays it seemed like second base umpire Marty Foster handled the play badly, watching the ball all the way from Laird’s hand to Rhymes’ glove. In general, sports officials are taught not to watch the ball, after all, the ball isn’t going to make any plays or commit any fouls by itself. Instead, you anticipate where the ball is going and watch there. Maybe Foster wasn’t sure where the throw was going and didn’t want to get in the way, but in any case, he seemed to only see the play at the end when the ball got there.

I was actually excited in the ninth, though. I’d never seen a no-hitter from start to finish, so I found myself pulling for Garza to finish it off (barring a six-run rally by the Tigers, which considering the lineup didn’t seem likely). I also liked ESPN’s brief shot of Justin Verlander in the dugout, slowly applauding Garza’s effort, sort of a “welcome to the club” gesture from a guy who knows what it’s like to throw a no-hitter.

(Matt Garza photo by Cindy_FL via Flickr.)

A popular old post reprinted from my former “New Tech Heroes” blog, way back in 2008:

In late 2006, when the fuss over lonelygirl15′s real identity and the fact that her YouTube videos had been scripted was at its peak, I had a sense of deja vu. I remembered The Spot.

Wired ran a cover story on actress Jessica Rose and lonelygirl15 co-creators Mesh Flinders and Miles Beckett, and writer Joshua Davis breathlessly described the cloak-and-dagger behind the scenes action that made lonelygirl15, in Davis’ words, “a mashup of homemade video diary, soap opera, and mysterious, hint-laden narrative like Lost. It’s all the more engrossing because viewers can correspond with the characters and even affect the plot.”

Although YouTube didn’t exist in 1995 and broadband connections were rare outside of the workplace, Flinders’ “thrillingly uncharted creative landscape” had been tried before, and had produced the same reaction from the much smaller number of regular Internet users at that time. The Spot, or “Melrose-Place-On-The-Web,” as Wired called it in June 1996, was produced by American Cybercast and was the first website to feature episodic fiction in the style later used by Flinders with lonelygirl15. It also had banner ad sponsors, which made the site a pioneer in online advertising, and won one of the original Webby Awards.

Without video, the site made clever use of photo galleries and online diaries to create interest in the lives of the Spotmates, a group of attractive young men and women in their early twenties. The Spotmates were portrayed “on camera” by models from the Los Angeles area, and their “diaries,” which predated the term but were similar in tone to a personal blog, were written by creator Scott Zakaran and a team of writers. Fans (“Spotfans”) were encouraged to comment on the diaries and give advice to the Spotmates, sometimes affecting the plot line with their suggestions.

I’ve never been much of a soap opera fan. When I was in college, the peak of the Luke and Laura wedding hysteria meant General Hospital was “destination television” for many girls in my dorm, as well as a lot of the guys (though they probably won’t admit it now). But The Spot was fascinating to me, especially in the beginning when, like lonelygirl15, it wasn’t clear whether it was real or not. Keep in mind that there weren’t dozens of blogs coordinating to figure out the truth about The Spot in the way lonelygirl15 was finally outed in 2006, so individual web surfers were mostly left on their own to decide.

The conflicts between the Spotmates as they shifted alliances between each other, moved in and out of the house and dished the dirt on each other was enough to keep me coming back for more, but there was one “event” that happened at The Spot that was particularly memorable. While photos of the Spotmates on the beach had always been a big part of the appeal of the website, the legendary Spotmate Lingerie Party provided hours of clicking fun (especially on a dial-up connection). Sadly, I can find no leftover images from the site anymore other than the few archived on The Wayback Machine. They were tame compared to the terabytes of pr0n available on the web today, anyway, I suppose, which probably accounts for my nostalgia for The Spot and the Spotmates.

The Spot fizzled out in 1997 when American Cybercast went bankrupt, but at its peak it had over 100,000 hits a day, the equivalent of millions of hits today. The Spot was revived in 2004 for a couple years, but it wasn’t the same. It was truly one of the defining moments of the early Internet for me, and I still remember it fondly. Anyone else have Spotmate memories?