Coffee, Coffee...

Aeropress review

As I posted on 3/27/06, I ordered that coffee press. We had our first cups this morning and both Carrie and I agreed, it was very good coffee. Technically (and I forgot this), it is more espresso than coffee. You can add hot water to it to make it coffee (an Americano I guess is the name for 'watered-down espresso'). The manufacturer states that the Americano is better than regular coffee b/c you pass less water by the beans, thus not extracting the acidic and bitter portion of the bean that usually follows with the last portions of water in a drip maker. It was very smooth (the filter is thin but effective) and you could drink the last swallow w/o a mouth full of grounds. And, it was concentrated, so I have to say, the 'morning shot' is a nice feature (instead of the morning sip, sip, sip, sip....it's cold..).

In short: for now, I am convinced. My french press is going into the cupboard (though not the trash). Now I just need a good grinder :) aka...

Iraq War Coalition Fatalities

Iraq War Coalition Fatalities

Quite an interesting animated map.

Welding plastic bags

Possibly another solution to the pocket kite:

Welding plastic bags: "Intro Welding plastic bags"

Plastic bags can be welded together with a soldering iron. The resulting seam is strong and water resistant. This is a very useful technique for making kites."

All Things Interesting

above is my netvibes page and here is a zoomed version (I'm stealing feeds from your sites though too)

Aerobie® AeroPress(TM) Coffee & Espresso Maker

After a thorough review, this is my new coffee kick machine coming in the mail later this week. It is 33.96 after shipping, brews in 35-50 seconds (depending on desired strength), and uses pressure to extract flavor out of beans. Clean up is a rinse and a discard of a puck of dry coffee. I'm getting it for home or office, but as it seems, this thing is transportable, so maybe both. Even Coffeegeek.com gave it a good review (and those guys spend 4 digits on espresso machines)...

Your Netvibes Setup

Guys, I'm curous about your Netvibes setup. What kinds of rss feeds are you connected to? Here are a couple of pics of my netvibes. The second one is my full screen...very large.

• collapsed
  
• expanded
  

The new things I'm playing with are the ones from netflix, flickr, and I've enjoyed local news from the indystar. Everyday I come across some news where I want to add another feed...but how many is too many on this site? Maybe netvibes is going to offer other layout designs?

Netvibes launch a 1 GB personal web storage module

Check it out.

Did you guys notice this yet? I just tried putting one file (an mp3) in it to see how it worked. Couldn't be much easier unless they developed drag-n-drop method. I'm sure privacy is an issue...but I'm not going to put my tax documents out here.

For those of us w/ kids

one of those, 'yeah, thought of it', but 'no, never really do it' type list, w/ a few new (for me) additions.

"How to Have a 36 Hour Day"

Not possible? I disagree. While we can never have more than 24 hours of chronological time I think it's very possible to have many more hours of functional time. In fact, I think it's probably possible to get up to 36 hours of functional time in your day if you do a few relatiively simple things. So without further ado, here is my prescription for the 36 hour day.

The Silent Speaker - Forbes.com

The Silent Speaker - Forbes.com: "NASA researchers can hear what you're saying, even when you don't make a sound.
In space, no one can hear you scream. Use a cell phone on a crowded commuter train and everyone can.

Charles Jorgensen is working to solve both problems, using an uncanny technology called subvocal speech recognition. Jorgensen demonstrates it at his offices at NASA's Ames Research Laboratory in Mountain View, Calif. He attaches a set of electrodes to the skin of his throat and, without his opening his mouth or uttering a sound, his words are recognized and begin appearing on a computer screen. "

How to create a torrent? · TorrentFreak, torrents and more

thought this is helpful, esp if we wanted to fileshare between us

How to create a torrent? · TorrentFreak, torrents and more: "Azureus

azureus bit torrent

1. File > New Torrent (or CTRL + N)

2. Tick “use an external tracker”.
And again, This is probably the hard part for most people. But it’s pretty easy, just put in one of the popular public trackers.

Here are some of the most popular trackers at the moment:

http://tracker.prq.to/announce
http://inferno.demonoid.com:3389/announce
http://tracker.bt-chat.com/announce
http://tracker.zerotracker.com:2710/announce

Put one of these in the tracker box

3. Select single file or dicectory, click NEXT and point to the file or directory you want to share, and click NEXT

4. Do NOT tick “private torrent”

5. Do tick “allow decentralized tracking”

6. Save the torrent and send it to your friends

Happy sharing. Note that you don’t need to upload the torrent to a website or a tracker. This means you control who gets the file and who doesn’t, and it won’t be visible to others!."

Treehugger: Ethanol Produced From Cheese

A virtuous process made even better, what a great cycle...

Treehugger: Ethanol Produced From Cheese: "With help from a state agricultural grant, a Wisconsin company has successfully tested technology that converts cheese waste into ethanol. According to Joe Van Groll, owner of DuBay Ingredients, the process starts with the cow and ends with the cow. Two years ago, Van Groll received a $29,000 grant from the Agricultural Development and Diversification Grant program to research and develop a process for the conversion of cheese whey permeate into ethanol.

The process also creates a high-nutrition cattle feed by extracting two by-products: probiotic feed supplement and salt. State agriculture officials say the cheese waste to ethanol technology could save cheese makers millions of dollars annually in disposal costs."

Sony® Portable Reader System

Check out the specs here.

This is the thing I've always wanted!

Impressive, Paper-like Display
Experience reading in a whole new way with the Sony^® Reader. It boasts an impressive six-inch display¹⁵⁸, utilizing breakthrough E Ink^® Display technology, presenting text as clear as if it were on paper*. In addition, the screen can be magnified 200% making reading a joy, even for sight-impaired readers.
*Daylight readable, high contrast, high resolution (check PPI), near 180º viewing angle.

Ultra Portable
The Sony® Reader offers a unique, on-the-go reading experience. With a very compact and lightweight design, you can take it almost anywhere. More compact than many paperbacks, it weighs under nine ounces¹⁵⁸ and is less than ½” thin¹⁵⁹. You can easily hold it in one hand while sipping coffee with the other. You can bring multiple titles to read while traveling without adding weight and bulk to your luggage. And with its rechargeable battery, you can turn approximately 7,500 pages on a single charge¹⁸⁹. Bring more, pack less... it's the perfect solution for people on-the-go.

More than eBooks
The Sony Reader isn’t just about reading eBooks. Using the included CONNECT™ Reader PC Software, you can easily transfer Adobe® PDF documents, BBeB Book, and other text file formats to the Reader. Seamlessly search, browse and download user-selected RSS Web content from CONNECT™ Store to the PC and transfer to your Sony® Reader. Take along your favorite Web newsfeeds, blogs and more to read where ever you are.

NPR : Box Set Features Political Stockpile of Billy Bragg

Listen here.

I haven't listened myself yet, but it's always good to hear about Billy in mainstream news!

Scuttle: History: http://www.freedesktop.org/~davidr/xgl-demo1.xvid.avi

This is cool, check out the GUI interface of this Linux distribution (xgl)...a great screencast too.

Scuttle: History: http://www.freedesktop.org/~davidr/xgl-demo1.xvid.avi: "Xgl Tech Demo video 11 minutes
shows off a bunch of new capabilities in xgl and compiz on linux"

Lazy Muncie

Just making sure you saw this. Be sure to check out the "Lazy Monday" video as well.

It's just too funny!

---

word processing preferences?

I'm just curious about the settings that others use with their word processors. I'm very picky about how I view my page while typing. For example, I always set my window to show the text as "Page Width" as opposed to some percentage of the screen, or "full page," etc. Know what I mean? Then, I move the size of the word processing window until my text becomes "108%" down in the status bar. This is always perfect for my eyes. It's true in both OpenOffice and in Word for me.

Are you guys picky about things like this? --just curious.

NPR : Congress Sets New Federal Debt Limit: $9 Trillion

NPR : Congress Sets New Federal Debt Limit: $9 Trillion

I'm moving to Canada. I can't take it anymore. How soon till our government collapses? It's just a matter of time, right? No one is making any moves to correct this budget problem. There must be something in the water that keeps us from a major uprising in this country...on the other hand, pot will become legal soon as the President has no other choice but to just make us feel comfortable as the country is in ruins.

Happy 150th birthday: a new era looms for old age - Yahoo! News

Happy 150th birthday: a new era looms for old age - Yahoo! News: "Aubrey de Grey, a biomedical gerontologist from Cambridge University, goes much further. He believes the first person to live to 1,000 has already been born and told the meeting that periodic repairs to the body using stem cells, gene therapy and other techniques could eventually stop the aging process entirely.

De Grey argues that if each repair lasts 30 or 40 years, science will advance enough by the next 'service' date that death can be put off indefinitely - a process he calls strategies for engineered negligible senescence."

What should I do if my eyeball pops out of its socket?

What should I do if my eyeball pops out of its socket? Get it put back in and soon! This information could come in handy. Unfortunately, the short article didn't have any pictures :)

YouTube - How to fold a tee-shirt perfectly

YouTube - How to fold a tee-shirt perfectly: "How to fold a tee-shirt perfectly"

Today @ PC World - What's Hot in Emerging Tech, Part 1

after listening to the o'reilly podcasts 'distributing the future' I'm hearing that this - O'Reilly's Emerging Technology Conference - is the ubergeek conference of the year (or at least way up there). It is ending today or tomorrow, but here's one part that caught my eye. Maybe the screen grabber will help our tendonitis and CT:

Today @ PC World - What's Hot in Emerging Tech, Part 1: "What's Hot in Emerging Tech, Part 1

Posted by Anne B. McDonald
Wednesday, March 08, 2006, 06:20 PM (PST)


A report from 24 hours at the most mind-bogglingest conference in computerdom.

Every year some of the most creative and innovative software and hardware developers on the planet gather at O'Reilly Media's Emerging Technology conference to describe what's new in the lab (or low-rent studio apartment, as the case may be).

Even if only a few of these programming marvels are ever used widely, those few have the potential to change the way everyday people work and play. And then you get a look at a multi-touch screen that lets you sculpt data and screen elements with your own fingers, and you start to think that you are indeed peering into the future.

A Real Screen Grabber Jeff Han of New York University was in the dark as he used both hands (and those of a volunteer) to demonstrate his research team’s 36-inch multi-touch display during the conference’s morning session yesterday.

Imagine using two fingers to resize an on-screen window, or drawing a shape with a fingertip, and then squeeze, pinch, and otherwise reshape the image with every finger you've got. You can even squeeze a virtual lava lamp, sending the multi-color liquid in various swirly patterns. Take one look at the demo, and you too will be itching to get your hands on this display.

Live Clipboard

You may see a new scissors icon popping up on your favorite Web sites in the not-too-distant future. Microsoft is developing the Live Clipboard that will give users much more control as they copy data from Web sites, or paste data into Web forms, or from the Web into their applications.

Ray Ozzie, creator of Lotus Notes and now Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft, showed the technology that layers atop Windows' own clipboard but recognizes such data as RSS feeds, street addresses, and calendar entries, and pastes intelligently.

The company"

End of the Line - Where Giant Ships Go When they Die

Story Link

What happens when huge cargo ships are retired? Where do they go? Who dismantles them? I guess I've never really thought about it, I guess I thought they all just went out to the middle of the ocean and sank to the bottom. This photo essay is really interesting.

YouTube - The Bittorrent Song (with subtitles)

YouTube - The Bittorrent Song (with subtitles): "The famous bittorrent song! Dude plays keyboards while singing about torrents, ISO's, cracks, hacks, and more. Pay attention to all the subtle details in the background. You notice something new each time. Due to popular request, the video is now subtitled for you to sing along!"

Check digg

CoffeeGeek - KitchenAid ProLine Grinder First Look

CoffeeGeek - KitchenAid ProLine Grinder First Look:

Ok, I've been a bit hooked on the CoffeeGeek.com website as of lately, and I'm jonesin' to get this manual espresso machine
(would this not be an aesthetically pleasing piece) or it seems this is a good automatic one that is much cheaper (but still, ouch, 350)...But as I've been reading, grinders make the difference, and this seems to be one that is heralded as a good one...There's a cheaper one here... ok

All Things Interesting

If you want to omit my overt postings of our profile identifiers, feel free to do so. I just thought it interesting to do a search and post the first entry I found on each of our identifiers...quite a variety, but telling???

ALI Swahili

"Uzuri wa nyumbani si rangi
fungua mlango uingie ndani

This Swahili proverb says that you have to open the door (fungua mlango) and enter (uingie) in order to recognize the qualities of a house (uzuri wa nyumbani) and those who inhabit it."

ROBBIE WILLIAMS LYRICS - Mr. Bojangles

Mr. Bojangles

I knew a man Bojangles
And he'd dance for you
In worn out shoes

With silver hair a ragged shirt
And baggy pants
He would do the old soft shoe

He would jump so high
Jump so high
Then he lightly touch down

He told me of the time he worked with
Minstrel shows travelling
Throughout the south

He spoke with tears of fifteen years
How his dog and he
They would travel about.

But his dog up and died
He up and died
And after twenty years he still grieved

He said 'I dance now
At every chance in the Honky Tonks
For my drinks and tips

But most the time I spend
Behind these country bars
You see on I drinks a bit'"

Weird Words: Ullage

Ullage: [ULLAGEIPA pronunciation]

The unfilled space in a barrel or wine bottle.

This is largely a technical word of the beverage technologist, the wine merchant or publican. The word comes ultimately from the Latin oculus, “eye”, which was used in a figurative sense by the Romans for the bung hole of a barrel. This was taken into French in the medieval period as oeil, from which a verb ouiller was created, to fill a barrel up to the bung hole. (When wine ferments in the barrel, there’s a slow loss of liquid due to evaporation through the wood. It’s very important to keep the barrels full, as otherwise unwanted bacteria and yeasts can get in and cause nasty side fermentations.) In turn, a noun ouillage was created, which was the immediate source of our word, first recorded in Norman English about 1300, at first in the sense of the amount of liquid needed to fill a barrel up to the bung hole. By an obvious extension, ullage came to refer to any amount by which a barrel is unfilled, perhaps because some of the contents have been used. And it is also applied to the unfilled air space at the top of a bottle of wine, which in this case is essential to allow for expansion of the contents as the temperature changes."

This just in!! Study found that...

students drink a lot and have sex during spring break!

Thank goodness we know that now :)

CoffeeGeek Podcast - powered by FeedBurner

CoffeeGeek Podcast - powered by FeedBurner: "CoffeeGeek Podcast"

Dictionary.hm - Free Online Searchable Live Dictionary

ajax dictionary - very minimal and quite good
Dictionary.hm - Free Online Searchable Live Dictionary

OLPC $100 laptop shown in final form? - Engadget

OLPC $100 laptop shown in final form? - Engadget

Across the Universe - Science Fiction - 'Counting Heads,' by David Marusek - New York Times

It's All Geek to Me: "Review by DAVE ITZKOFF
Published: March 5, 2006

HERE'S a question I don't expect to come anywhere close to answering by the end of this column: Why does contemporary science fiction have to be so geeky?"

Open Season On Open Source?

Read the short article...
What happens when open-source companies start "selling out?" Linus Torvalds says it can't really happen. "While open-source companies may be for sale, open-source communities aren't." Once an open-source idea is sold, if the community doesn't like it, they can just start a new project that's better...

Oh yeah...

MAKE: Blog: The Kon-Tiki adventure

MAKE: Blog: The Kon-Tiki adventure: "The Kon-Tiki adventure"



alright, one of these needs to be built for Jeff's pond...

My-BIC = Easy Ajax

With GoogleMaps and Netvibes, among others, it seems that if we want to be worthy of the name 'ubernerd', we should know what all this Ajax rage is about...Jeff, any help here? This looks like a starter page, but still above my head.

My-BIC = Easy Ajax: "My-BIC = Easy Ajax"

OkCupid! Politics Test

OkCupid! Politics Test

Take the test to see where you stand politically. Seriously, Ken, I'd like to see what you think of the questions! :)