2 Jul
Des Moines just had their 16th annual Yankee Doodle Pops. It was a blast and I scored some great photos. Check ‘em out!
Yankee Doodle Pops – Best Of (37 photos)
Sarah and Dan in front of the capitol
Beautiful weather brought out huge crowds.
Boom!
24 Jun
Still playing catch up, here is what I read March 2010. If you didn’t see my January and February posts, be sure to catch those too. I realized today that I read Lifehacker wrongly: instead of just reading their summaries, I need to be reading the entire post they reference at the end for the full content. Sure, I’ll usually get most of the content, but all the stuff I miss sure adds up!
17 Healthy Meals from 1 Chicken and $25 [cheap healthy good] – A neat way to stretch a chicken out for a while!
Your High IQ Will Kill Your Startup [Max Klein] – The takeaway from this WONDERFUL article is that while intelligence will give you a head start, without hard work and persistence you will lose your edge and eventually fail.
If you are intelligent, and another person is not as intelligent, but the other person is willing to train harder than you, the other person will very quickly overtake you in ability. … For the first time in their life, in spite of their intelligence, these intelligent people are challenged, and they start failing.
Replace Your Thermostat With a Programmable One [Lifehacker] – You’ll save enough money to make this easy process totally worthwhile. I did it out at my trailer (but was confused and wired it wrong initially).
The Panic Status Board [Panic] – This beautiful status board displays the heartbeat of the company at a glance: how many new e-mails, project status, countdowns, company-related tweets and more. The best part? They saw an immediate increase in the effectiveness just because employees were aware of data on the board. Genius.
How to Teach Yourself Programming in 21 Days [Abstruse Goose] – As a programmer, this comic made me laugh.
Compass End Table [Instructables] – A neat custom surface for a table that includes 500 mini-compasses and magnetic coasters that creates a cool effect.
Google Gesture Search for Android [Google Mobile Blog] – Although now we have a VERY capable speech-to-text engine on Android, this might be a solution worth checking out where you use gestures to search for apps, contacts, etc. on your Android phone.
10 Uncluttering Things to Do Every Day [Unclutterer] – Reset your home every night, don’t leave a room empty handed, put stuff away, take out the garbage, and more.
How to Cook a Sous-Vide Steak [Serious Eats] – Sous-Vide is a newer method of cooking meat, sealed in a bag, in a bath of hot water at exactly the temperature you wish to serve the meat at. This guide shows how to do it perfectly — and suggests that cheaper, tougher cuts can be just as good as an expensive NY Strip!
What Makes A Great Cover Letter? [Smashing Magazine] – My lower than average GPA makes the career fair frustrating. Perhaps I can use a cover letter to stand out this year. This LONG post gives you plenty of tips to get started with!
Take A Few Hours to Unlock Some Cash [New York Times] – NYT suggests that you should take a weekday to intentionally focus on trimming down your budget and finding ways to get extra cash. Neat idea, especially if you need to take a day off for furlough.
Whip Your Movie and TV Show Art Into Shape [Lifehacker] – Use Boxee or XBMC? Have tons of movies or TV shows? Load up the art with this guide from LH.
‘Road Trains’ Are The Future? [BBC] – European researchers are working on a system that uses computers to drive cars in trains, allowing for hands-free driving and more efficient fuel economy.
Water Usage Spikes During Breaks in the Gold Medal Olympic Hockey Game [The Globe and Mail] – The Canadians waited to pee until there were breaks in the game — and the water consumption of the city shows it!
Two Feet of Snow [Make] – NYC got two feet of snow, captured nicely in this photo.
Ice Cream Cone + Pizza = Pizzacone [NY Daily News] – I want one. That is all.
iPhone Credit Card Scanner [Read Write Web] – Simple gadget that would make it easy for people to accept credit cards anywhere.
HDMI Cable Ripoff [MintLife Blog] – Paid more than $10 for an HDMI cable? Sucker. Here’s why you shouldn’t next time.
22 Jun
In keeping with my latest series, here is the best of what I read online in February.
Which Media Center is right for you? [Lifehacker] – Lifehacker compares top media center software XBMC, Boxee and Windows Media Center. If you’re thinking about building a dedicated set-top box, check this out first.
Name Brand vs Store Brand Foods [Consumer Reports] – A short comparison of food quality, showing that store brand foods don’t always suck.
Wire Whole-House Speakers Using Existing Phone Lines [Lifehacker] – A guide how to convert your phone lines into speaker wires. Just be sure to read all the comments before you try it.
Become a Gmail Master [Lifehacker] – Of course you use Gmail, so you might as well learn the tricks to make it do your bidding. Covers keyboard shortcuts, Google Labs, and a few other topics.
Back up your Firefox Profile with about:support [Lifehacker] – Use the new about:support page in Firefox to easily back up your profile.
Tutorial: A Snowboarding Website Design [Line25] – A step-by-step guide to creating a slick snowboarding-themed web design in Photoshop.
Steakhouse Dining on a Poor Budget [mom advice] – Quick recipes and guides to put together a nice steakhouse quality dinner at home for cheap. Great guide if you’re overdue for a date but don’t have the spare change to go out.
How to Cook a Steak in the Oven [the kitchn] – Although it is summer now and perfect grilling weather, it won’t stay that way forever. Make a note of this guide so when winter rolls around you can impress your friends with a perfect oven-cooked steak.
When Faced With Two Choices… – Simply toss a coin. Why? Click the link.
Three Lenses Every Photographer Should Own [digital photography school] – Spoiler alert: “a fast general purpose zoom (18-50mm), a macro lens and a telephoto zoom (70-200mm)”. I’d love to get a DSLR camera someday, so I flagged this for future reference.
The Secret World of Private Bittorrent Trackers [Gizmodo] – If the only Bittorrent you know is The Pirate Bay or ISOHunt, you’re missing out. This Gizmodo article gives you a brief glimpse into one of the many private trackers. I believe they are profiling the tracker What.cd, but I’m not sure.
Thinksound Earbuds Review [Gizmodo] – Looking for some quality earbuds for around $60? Gizmodo really liked these.
Top 10 Plugins for Windows Media Center [Lifehacker] – If you’re using WMC without any plugins, you’re missing out. Um, I guess I’m missing out, which is why I flagged this post.
How to Build a Facebook Landing Page for your Business [Mashable] – How to create a custom page for your business that will make it stand out among the other Facebook Fan pages.
MeetWith.me – I found this web app after it was featured on Lifehacker. A SWEET tool that loads your info from Google Calendar, Outlook, or iCal to create an easy to share calendar that shows when you’re busy. It’s a great way to share my availability with friends (although my summer calender is mostly empty).
XHP: A New Way to Write PHP [Facebook Engineering] – A mix of XML and PHP, this looks like a fun hybrid to play with, but I’m not sure I’d use it without more investigation.
Making Facebook 2x Faster [Facebook Engineering] – A short post of how Facebook tackled the goal of making their site twice as fast in only six months. Excellent work!
Check back tomorrow for my post of the best of March!
21 Jun
This is the first in a new series of regular posts where I will highlight the coolest stuff I’ve seen on the internet. This is a back issue that covers January 2010. I’ll be catching up this week, posting an article each day with another month’s links. After I catch up, look for these posts on a weekly basis.
The Great Best of 2009 Recap [Lifehacker, 1/1/10] – I love Lifehacker. It is one of the first feeds I pull up in Google Reader each day. This post highlights their best content from 2009. If you weren’t reading Lifehacker in 2009, you should read this.
All You Need is Love [Gizmodo, 1/2/10] – I’m a sucker for clever videos, and this compilation of over 150 groups singing “All You Need Is Love” made me smile.
Prevent Your Pants Pockets From Getting Holes [Lifehacker, 1/9/10] – Put an iron-on patch on the inside of your back pocket to keep your wallet from wearing holes through your pocket! Now all I need is an iron…
Sex Up Your Sandwich [Wisebread via LH, 1/8/10] – Ideas to make your brown bag lunch more exciting. Now that I don’t have a meal plan, I should probably try some of these ideas.
Top 10 Clever Kitchen Repurposing Tips [Lifehacker, 1/16/10] – Use a ketchup bottle to make pancakes, clean the dishwasher with lemonade Kool-Aid and more!
Make a $2 Adjustable Smartphone Car Mount [Instructables via LH, 1/26/10] – I’m taking a trip soon and I’ll be using my phone’s GPS, so I might try to put this together this week. For the price, it can’t be beat!
Heating Your Space [NYT via LH, 1/26/10] – A quick overview of some personal heaters. I might use one of these this winter under my desk so I can keep the rest of my trailer cooler.
10 Tips and Tools for Freelancers [Lifehacker, 1/31/10] – A collection of tips for freelancers. Since I’m leaning towards this option in lieu of finding a job, I should keep these tips in mind.
Less Rediculous Standard Ad Sizes [css-tricks, 1/7/10] – An article describing a way to build a framework for website ads that allow for different sized ads. Built around a 125×125 ad with 10px gutters, this seems like a reasonable methodology!
Unrealized Projects [Seth Godin, 1/18/10] – The keys to being a successful artist: ship and fail often.
Google Readers Tracks Feedless Sites [Google Reader Blog, 1/25/10] – In case you didn’t know this by now, you can use Google Reader to track sites that don’t offer RSS feeds. Sweet!
Check back tomorrow for the best of February!
6 Jun
I have a Motorola Droid. I’ve been in love since November when I first picked it up. Here is a quick overview of my favorite apps.
I hate the native Facebook app on Droid because it is missing so many features that the iPhone app has. Therefore, I placed a link to the Facebook web app on my home screen.
I also strongly dislike the native calendar app, so I went with the Google Calendar web app on my home screen.
I’m a huge Google Reader fan. Sadly, there isn’t a native app for Reader yet. Add this one to your home screen too.
I tweet, and my client of choice is the official Twitter app. I don’t like the way it does photo uploads, so if I’m TwitPic’ing something, I’ll use Swift (my 2nd favorite). I also wish Twitter would let you scroll back to older tweets and load them, but it won’t (Swift does this).
If you have a Droid, it has an external flash that is just an LED. This app lets you use it as a flashlight. Be sure to add the widget after you install that app for easy access to turn the light on and off.
WeatherBug is a fantastic app for tracking the weather. It sticks the current temp in the status bar and alerts you of upcoming severe weather.
It’s just called Movies, and does just that. Look up movie times, recent DVD releases, and read reviews.
If you aren’t using this app, go to Dropbox.com and download it! Think of it as a virtual flash drive. You get 2GB storage free that you can access from anywhere. On PC, it syncs folders automatically across all the PCs you have installed it on. On Android, it doesn’t sync automatically, but it makes the files available on demand. Very nice to have another way to access my Dropbox files.
Think of ATK as the Ctrl+Alt+Delete for Android. It lists the apps that are currently running in the background and lets you kill them. Great for saving battery life.
You might not Foursquare, but if you do, get the official app. It’s beautiful.
Need to take notes on your Android device? I love AK Notepad for it. Simple and straightforward, it does the job.
GPS not working quite right? Want to check your current speed or elevation? Grab this app. Just a neat little app to have.
If you scrobble your music plays to Last.fm, you want this app on your phone so you can scrobble your mobile plays too!
This app from Google Labs is a podcast subscription app. Subscribe to audio podcasts and download and listen to them on the go. Has a nice search feature for discovering new podcasts too.
Shazam listens to music that is playing and tells you what it is. Great for listening to the radio or hanging out at the mall.
Runstar is a neat little app for tracking your runs.
Want to impress your friends? Get this map and identify any shiny dot in the night sky. I couldn’t believe how well it worked. Load it up, point your phone into the night sky, and watch your phone display the sky you are looking at — annotated! Such a neat app!
Google Goggles uses your webcam to identify… well, anything. Point it at famous photos, books, food labels, logos, whatever and watch Google look it up.
That’s what I love on my Droid. What apps do you love?
14 Apr
I wrote this a long time ago. Maybe when I was 10? I don’t know for sure. Enjoy!
Taxes
by Adam Reineke
One night when I’m in bed,
I seem to overhear,
My parents talking about,
That scary time of year.
When I wake up,
As I look around,
The simple sign of breakfast,
Isn’t to be found.
As Dad drinks his coffee,
And Mom drinks her tea,
The paper strewn table,
Is quite a sight to see.
When trying to ask a question,
I’m sure it must be hate,
They push me away like vegetables,
On the dinner plate.
With papers on the table,
All stacked in a bunch,
I look upset again,
‘Cause they forgot about my lunch.
I feel sorry for them,
As they stay awake all night,
Still sitting at the table,
To greet the morning’s light.
Their frazzled hair and blood-shot eyes,
Make them look absurd,
But when I try to interrupt,
I can’t get in a word.
That day Dad left,
Putting papers in the mail,
And said with a quiet sigh,
“I hope we didn’t fail.”
The very next morning,
They didn’t get out of bed,
I really couldn’t blame them,
But I wish I had been fed.
7 Feb
Google’s ad that aired tonight (shown below) covered a bunch of features in just 52 seconds. Here’s what I saw:
They did several more “search story” ads too: check them out at http://www.youtube.com/searchstories.
6 Feb
Well, I’ve dropped Calc 2 for this semester (soon as I get my professor to sign the drop slip). 18 credits was too much to handle and Calc seemed like the best thing to put off.
That means I’ll need to stick around Ames this summer and finish Calc 2 (May 17-July 9), so my summer break will run from July 9 until August 23rd (or 44 days without class). That’s still plenty of time to have fun.
4 Feb
“Improve your presentation by remembering one simple truth: humans are animals. They like shiny objects, funny things, good tasting foods, and enjoying themselves.”
– Mouth Breathing, StuffPresentersLike.com
© 2010 Adam Reineke. All Rights Reserved.
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