Action

"Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy."

~Dale Carnegie

The Brick Walls

"The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people."

~Randy Pausch

Rewarding Hustle

I always make sure I have some cash on hand to pay the neighborhood kids to shovel snow after a storm, and Nemo was no exception.

Am I wealthy enough to afford to pay people for all my household chores?

Nope.

Am I so damn lazy that I have to others do it?

Hardly.

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Planning for #Sandy (Or, "What to do when you can't find a generator")

Updated on Monday, November 5, 2012 at 6:21PM by jf

Almost exactly a year ago, we were without power (And heat. And fresh water.) for almost five days.

My wife and I vowed that we would never go through that again if we could help it, so we planned to buy a generator and transfer switch for this year's storm season so that we could power our home's basic necessities (heat, hot water, sump pump, fridges).

Long story short, we didn't. The money we budgeted for a generator went toward replacing our broken hot water heater, but we vowed to get a generator as soon as it made sense for our budget.

Then we started tracking Hurricane Sandy.

Thursday night, my wife said, "We should get a generator tomorrow." 

Powering our sump pump is critical for us, especially after installing a new hot water and heater and, six months earlier, replacing a broken washing machine - both of which are located in our relatively wet basement.

At 7 AM on Friday I began calling around, looking for generators. Most retailers laughed at my request while others were sympathetic to my search - but they still couldn't help me as there weren't generators in stock, anywhere.

So I started to do some research to find a creative solution. Here's what I came up with.

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WANT: iPad Mini. NEED: iPhone 5.

I really want an iPad mini.

The only reason I upgraded from an iPad 2 to the iPad 3 (or whatever it's called now) is because I could get LTE tethering from Verizon, which has been a gift from the universe on the few occassions that I've needed it.

However, ever since I got the first iPad and gave my wife my first generation Kindle, I've missed the smaller form factor of the Kindle eReaders.

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Pure Wireless Digital Audio: WaveJamr from RadTech

Updated on Saturday, September 22, 2012 at 12:56PM by jf

Updated on Friday, September 28, 2012 at 3:29PM by jf

I love my Apple TV. Not just because of the video it allows me to watch, but the music it lets me play from our iPhones or Macs using Airplay.

I really want whole-house audio (a la Sonos, without the ridiculous cost) and Apple's Airplay can help me do that.

I have a bunch of high-quality stereo speakers from a variety of sources (PC speakers, home stereos, etc.) that I can place all over my house, but the only way that I can get whole-house audio is to purchase and install an Apple TV in every room while outputting audio to each via the TOS (optical) audio connector on the Apple TV.

But I really don't want to spend $99 per room to make this happen - plus an additional $30 for a TOSLink adapter for each set of these analog speakers.

I got to thinking: how small can Airplay device really get? Maybe someone makes one?

So, I started trawling the Interwebs and here's what I found: nothing. (At least as far as Airplay goes.)

What I did find was a product in the form factor that I wanted, but one that uses Bluetooth instead of Airplay.

It's called the WaveJamr from RadTech.

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Sparrow Acquired by Google

My favorite mail app (for both Mac and iPhone) was just acquired by Google. Or should I say, acq-hired.

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Coffee Infographic

[via Amanda Blain on Google+]

Unboxing 14-year-old Technology

As a follow-up to my post on bringing back the use of the Swatch .beat Universal Internet Time, here's a gallery of the unboxing of my original Swatch Beat watch after being in storage for all these years.

It's time to bring back the .Beat

In 1998, my wife bought me a Swatch Beat watch. I think she heard me mention it after reading about it in Wired magazine and she got it for me as a gift.

WTF is a .Beat?

Swatch, along with the endorsement of Nicholas Negroponte, who was then the Director of the MIT Media Lab, proposed a Universal Internet Time known as the .Beat.

It works like this: A day is divided into 1000 ".beats". So, one Swatch ".beat" is equivalent to 1 Minute 26.4 Seconds.

You set your watch according to Biel Meantime (BMT). (In a classic marketing move, Biel, Switzerland is the corporate headquarters of Swatch.)

So, when you want to schedule a phone call with someone across the world, you don't have to figure out time zones - you simply indicate that the meeting should take place @xxx .beats.

Click to read more ...