Otterblog

Another year, another season of American Idol… Somebody asked me if I was going to blog about it. I said that would require me to watch it. I recognize the phenomenom. There may be a small part of me that appreciates the phenomenom. But I don’t have to be part of it.

If you picked up our features section today, now renamed LIVING, you might notice two different things about it. First, it has a staff story from Las Vegas, written by Tim Clodfelter. Tim was our TV reporter, but in the past year, we’ve reoriented much of his time to technology, particularly personal technology. And the place to get a heaping helpful of technology is the ICES show, where Tim was last week. Look for more of his coverage on Monday and throughout the week. Two was the recipe for Mac and Cheese, the perfect food, at the bottom of the page. We’re not abandoning our Wednesday food section, but as we noted to readers a few weeks ago, we’re moving stories around a bit, and trying to not carry themes out the window. Readers say they like variety, fish with their “chips” in this case.

Speaking of food. We got the scoop of the month this Saturday, with our piece by Lisa Boone on the great Martha Stewart truffle hunt in Stokes County. Who knew? The next thing you know, they will be feeding acorns to the pigs to make prosciutto up in the hills.

Finally, a quick technical update. As faithful readers can attest, the OTTERBLOG site has frequently been set upon by spammers. When it was a trickle, some of our IT folks said it was a good thing. It meant that I was getting enough traffic to attract the attention of spammers. Then it got out of control. They’ve tweaked the comments section, which should eliminate much of the problem.