Let’s geek out a little. Liz was asking about social networking aggregators (she was, I swear), and I bet there are a bunch, but FriendFeed is the big one right now. As soon as I checked it out and set up my feed, I noticed that while there are a few of the online music services listed, there wasn’t a way to publish what I was listening to on my iTunes. However, since I already have Brandon Fuller’s awexxxome Now Playing iTunes Plugin installed, and that publishes to my own blog, I figured there had to be a way to hook Now Playing to FriendFeed. Sure enough, there is a “Ping” function built in to Now Playing that sends an HTTP POST to a given URL with the the now playing info. A quick download of the FriendFeed php API, and now a few lines of php bridge the gap and publish what’s playing on my PC to FriendFeed. Incredibly, it turns out that the FriendFeed API uses the same fieldnames that arrive in the Now Playing POST. That never happens. require_once("~/lib/friendfeed-api/php/friendfeed.php"); define( 'FF_NICKNAME', 'XXXXXXXXX' ); define( 'FF_REMOTE_KEY', 'XXXXXXXXXXXX' ); if ($_POST['title']) { $friendfeed = new FriendFeed( FF_NICKNAME, FF_REMOTE_KEY ); $entry = $friendfeed->publish_link( 'Now Playing: '.$_POST['title'], $_POST['link'] ); }

Based on a limoncello recipe that Amy passed along:

15 oranges, zest only no white part (I used organic blood oranges)
2 bottles (750ml) 100 proof vodka (I used cheap Seagram’s 100 from Bargain Bank)
4 cups sugar (I used unbleached cane sugar)
5 cups water

Zest all fruit into a bowl (a Microplane works great for zesting lots of fruit), then put the zest into a one-quart canning jar and add 1 bottle of vodka. Close the jar and let sit 10 days-40 days in a dark place. After letting it sit, strain the infused vodka through a cheesecloth and metal strainer into a bowl and discard the zest (there must be something you can use this for?). Mix sugar and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil, cook 4-5 minutes. While you’re making the sugar syrup, sterilize some canning jars/bottles by boiling them in a big pan of water for 10 minutes or so. Pull the bottles out so they can cool. Let sugar syrup cool completely and then mix it into the infused vodka along with the second bottle of vodka. Once your final product is ready, and the bottles are fairly cool, strain the arancello into the bottles, and allow to steep for a few more days before drinking (yeah right!).

The result is some amazing stuff. Since you’ll be adding 5 cups of sugar water and another 750ml of vodka to the initial infusion, the result is about 2 1/2 to 3 quarts of finished arancello!!