Wiimotes are cheap, and useful for all sorts of fun things! Just made this video to show off one of the things they can do.
C&B’s Old Fashioned Quinine Tonic
Friends who make things
Erin and Steph make their own Quinine tonic — it is delicious. I helped them with their packaging. I think it turned out pretty well!
Want some Quinine tonic of your own? Give me a shout. They are now selling it in San Francisco!
Small batches, made with care to order. You can get some of the first or second batches they are distributing to the public.
-Ben
Share with your tribe
Long ago it was prudent to share where good food, dangerous animals, and adequate shelter could be found with other members of your tribe. The more your tribe shared, the faster it learned.
Tribe: a distinctive close-knit group
How much of the digital content you consume comes to you by way of social media? Facebook, Twitter, the blogs you choose to read? How often do you re-share this information?
Instagram has a certain feel. People saw what others were doing with the filters, and started copying them. Then they started improvising and creating new content. This is happening with Vine now too. More people are becoming entrepreneurs because they see others doing it. We are a sharing and learning species.
I want a way for my tribe to give me daily, weekly, monthly updates on what they are learning. Where they failed, where they succeeded. The signal to noise ratio of Facebook makes it an imperfect platform for this. The time it takes to write an article and post it to a blog is a technological and mental hurdle for many people.
I want to learn from my tribe.
A few questions – and I really want answers:
- How big is your tribe?
- How do you share knowledge?
- What is the nature of the knowledge you share?
- eg. Do you share instruction on how to build something, job openings, videos, photos, social knowledge (gossip!) etc…
4 of the Most Useful iOS 6 Jailbreak Apps
The iOS 6 jailbreak is being created by the fellows of evad3rs (with MuscleNerd) and can be found at http://www.evasi0n.com/ I have a list of useful iOS 6 jailbreak apps for you to try.
There has not been an iOS jailbreak for quite some time, and this will the first one that allows people with an iPhone 4S to upgrade their operating system.
Useful iOS 6 Jailbreak apps and tools
Jailbreaking allows you to do a lot with your phone. Here are some of my favorite tweaks.
You can get these apps on cydia – the jailbroken app store after you jailbreak.
Swipe Selection
This Cydia install allows you to simply move your fingers over the keyboard, like they were arrow keys. No more damn magnifying glass. This is the best update to typing on an iPhone, and worth jailbreaking for alone.
Activator
This tweak allows you to change how the hardware buttons (Home, Volume, sleep and mute switch) behave, or to make custom touch interactions. Now when I want to launch my sound recorder, I just double tab the lock screen clock. Double pressing the sleep button brings up 1Password, so I don’t have to remember long passwords.
f.lux
f.lux changes the color temperature of your screen depending on sunrise and sunset. This makes it easier on your eyes as it gets darker out. Because it changes to a more incandescent color – you do not get the “wake up” effect of staring at a screen.
3G Unrestrictor
Want to use facetime over 3G or LTE? This is your tool. It tricks any app into thinking 3G (or LTE) is actually wifi.
If you have any questions about jailbreaking or these useful iOS 6 Jailbreak apps – ask me! I am more than happy to walk you through it.
Open
Today I woke up with an open mind. I have literally endless opportunities ahead of me. Should I set up a new workstation in my woodshop, read a book, or go for a hike? Should I rent a chainsaw and turn some felled trees in my backyard into chairs, or cut the grass? Should I do none of those things and spend the day on Facebook? The best part – IT DOESN’T MATTER. I now have a plethora of this rare commodity called “Free Time”.
I am willing to trade some of this precious time for interesting experiences. Want to go do something random? Hit me up.
AppGratis “Free” apps may be gamed
Apps are marketed as going from paid to free, a little research showed that this is sometimes a contrived marketing ploy.
Apps that were free switch to paid for a short time before they are featured, so that they can say they dropped in price.
App Rankings for appHiFi Dock Enhancer – note the price INCREASE that precedes the price drop for AppGratis.
App Rankings for Turnacle – note a similar price INCREASE that precedes the price drop for AppGratis.
Here is a short list of other apps that see a boost in rankings from AppGratis.
AppGratis’s description of their service:
Free & paid-to-free apps daily.
Huge discounts on paid apps.
Every single app hand-picked & tested thoroughly.
One unintrusive push notification a day.
AppGratis just raised $13.5 for their app discovery engine from Iris Capital and the Orange Publicis Fund.
Even with the gaming of the system, there is no denying the success of the AppGratis platform. Featured apps spike in rankings, seeing a push into the top 5 or so apps in the Apple app store. Pretty sweet little bump.
Your best cup: The Aeropress Coffee Press
I recently purchased the the Aeropress Coffee press on Amazon for $25.
I love it!
I had read good reviews and watch several videos of it in action, and decided I wanted a better cup of coffee.
Let’s just say my coffee consumption has gone up… a lot. Before, I was making coffee with a french press, but I would put off cleaning it because it was a pain, and I always had a lot of sediment at the bottom of my glass, which was ok, but not a great taste.
The Aeropress leaves no sediment, and only takes 15 – 20 seconds to make an excellent cup, and cleans up almost instantly.
It lets me carefully tweak my brew using scientific method to make it exactly how I like it. If you are looking for a better cup of coffee, I suggest you try it out.
Shaking it up
After almost five years, I will be leaving Couchsurfing.
In August of 2007 I started an incredible, and what some called crazy journey. That journey is continuing at the end of the month, but on a different path.
That summer of 2007, I turned down a management position at BB&T bank in Washington DC. I had gotten the offer by flying to DC, and informing the hiring manager that I was there to interview HER about the position – to see if I really wanted it. When she got back to me a week later, I already had other plans.
My roommate and I flew to California, and rode our bikes from San Francisco to LA down the coastal highway, PCH 1. I then took a bus directly to Burningman. Two weeks later, I flew to South Korea to start a seven month journey around Asia. While there, I got my LSAT scores back. I had nailed it. Time to decide what law school to go to… only – law school didn’t hold so much appeal to me any more.
While traveling, I came into contact with the then small crew who was holding Couchsurfing together. There were something like 160,000 members using the site at that time. In May, I flew to Alaska to help them continue building the site. I have spent the last five years living and working for Couchsurfing in Alaska, Berkeley, Costa Rica, San Francisco, Istanbul, Atlanta, Mexico, New Zealand, Italy, and Oakland. I met my girlfriend during this time and my experiences in these locations with the close group of friends and family who were the CS staff have quite literally shaped my life.
Couchsurfing changes the lives of the members who use it. The site now has almost 6 million members, and is growing rapidly. We have taken $22 million in venture funding. Of the original employees from that summer in Alaska, only one remains after I leave. It has been an incredible learning experience watching the company move from nomadic non-profit to a high profile tech company in San Francisco, and I will love watching it continue to evolve.
However, I am not built to live in an office staring at a computer all day every day. My recent adventure rafting 220 miles of the Colorado river in the Grand Canyon has only emphasized this.
I am going to focus on creating an outdoor education company, one that fosters learning and new experiences for children and adults. I am looking forward to forging new connections, and having more face to face interactions with the people who’s lives I am changing.
If you are interested in what I am up to – shoot me an email: [email protected]. If you like the outdoors, and want to pass some of your knowledge on to children, hit me up!
Rafting the Grand Canyon
In a few days I leave to go raft the Grand Canyon. My brother and I and some friends are going to be on the water for 18 days with no guide! That is the longest I have ever been on an extended outdoors trip for, and I am very excited about it.
We put in at Lee’s Ferry on December 26th.
We have a company that is packing all of our food for us, so we will not starve, but we will be doing this in the middle of winter, so warmth is my biggest concern. I have many base layers, thermals, insulated mid layers, etc… but am still worried (I have no built in insulation!)
I have decided to bring nothing electronic with me except for flashlights. No phone, camera, iPad, GPS, MP3 player or the like. The choice to bring no camera was tough and I am still considering it. My camera is a Nikon D50, DSLR that takes great photos, but it uses batteries, has an LCD screen, and I think it would break my feeling of remoteness out there. I have a love / hate relationship with technology that I need to work out. The feeling of not taking a single photo out there bugs me – so I may give into this one.
I hope to use this time to draw, read, reflect, and get some perspective on life other than the day in day out experiances that I am used to having. It has been over a year since I did something I thought was crazy.
So here we go again with the crazyness.
This is a gross misuse of “add on fees”
My bill for Internet this month:
Simple – huh? Time warner is getting sued for their modem rental fees – maybe sonic is over stepping here a bit.
Fusion Broadband – Single Line – 39.95 39.95
Fusion Broadband Information – 0.00 0.00
Data $19.97 Voice $19.98
Voice Federal Subscriber Line Charge Fee 6.50 6.50
Voice Federal Universal Service Fund Fee 2.41 2.41
Voice California Lifeline Telephone Service 0.15 0.15
Surcharge
Voice California Deaf and Disabled Telecom 0.03 0.03
Program Surcharge
Voice California High Cost Fund-A Surcharge 0.05 0.05
Voice California High Cost Fund-B Surcharge 0.04 0.04
Voice California Teleconnect Fund Surcharge 0.01 0.01
Voice California Advanced Services Fund 0.02 0.02
Surcharge
Voice California 911 Emergency Surcharge 0.07 0.07
Voice Oakland Utility Users Tax 2.02 2.02
Fusion Phone Service 0.00 0.00
Voice California Public Utility Commission 0.02 0.02
User Fee
Voice FCC Interstate Telecom Service 0.05 0.05
Provider Fee
Property Tax Allotment Surcharge 0.10 0.10
Voice Regulatory Recovery Surcharge 0.38 0.38
Modem Equipment Rental Fee 6.50 6.50
Credit Prorate 2012-11-20 to 2012-11-01 for 0.09cr 0.09cr
Voice FCC Telecommunications Relay Service
Fund
Credit Prorate 2012-11-20 to 2012-11-01 for 0.23cr 0.23cr
Voice Regulatory Recovery Surcharge
Charge Prorate 2012-11-01 to 2012-11-20 for 0.24 0.24
Voice Regulatory Recovery Surcharge
Total: 58.22