I just received my AeroPress, and I must say that I am very impressed with it for a couple of reasons…

AeroPress is a little expresso machine that is made by a company that seems to be popular for it’s line of frisbees. I guess they also like coffee

First off: It makes excellent coffee. Using nothing other than the standard Seattle’s Best coffee that we are stocked with here at work, I have been able to make a couple of excellent cups of Americano. When I compare the coffee it produces to the same coffee produced in our big commercial coffee brewing machine, AeroPress wins out hands down.

Secondly, It is easy to clean. When I ordered the AeroPress, I figured that it would make a decent cup of coffee, but I’d also be stuck washing it after each brew. I was wrong. Since the main cylinder features a rubber plunger, the inside of the unit is very clean, and the “puck” of grounds at the bottom just kind of ejects out into the trash. A quick rince and that’s it.

I cannot comment yet on build quality and longevity of the plunger, but I’ll be sure to write something if any components of the AeroPress fail. On first blush I definitely recommend this little coffee maker.

I ordered mine from AeroPress.ca for about $32, and had it in my office the next day.

Now this is cool.  I hope there is not a delay in it being released to Canada.

http://technoracle.blogspot.com/2009/04/i-can-finally-talk-about-my-apple.html

Lately I have been spending a bunch of my free time helping my lovely fiancee, Maureen, setup a new mobile esthetics business. Maureen has been an esthetician for over 10 years, and decided that now is the time to work for herself… so www.mobicure.com was born. The business is restricted to Ottawa, ON and vicinity and provides a bunch of services including manicures, pedicures, waxing and caters to individuals, groups and has some special services in the works for seniors.

If you are in the Ottawa area and need any of the services above, check out the site. The cool thing about getting someone to come to you is that you can sit around with your friends/family while sipping on some wine while getting services performed. Going to a spa… well, you have traffic, parking hassles and often if you have a pedicure or manicure done you will mess it up on the way home.

This service could also be useful for body builders as well when it comes time for competitions and the massive amounts of hair removal that come with them.

Anyway, check it out!

I just got a new Zune 120, and discovered that the following settings work pretty well for converting/ripping videos for viewing on the Zune 120. These setting may also work on the Zune 80 and earlier because I am not using the h.264 codec.

I am primarily converting Xvid content, but as long as you have the K-lite codec pack, you should be fine with other content — in theory at least .

(This is for Handbrake 0.9.3)

• Output settings: M4V file, Large file size, web optimized are unchecked.
• Picture Settings: Crop=Automatic, Size=Don’t change, Anamorphic=Strict, Filters unchecked or none.
• Video: Codec=MPEG-4 (FFmpeg), Framerate=Same as source, 2-Pass=unchecked, Target Size=empty, Avg bitrate=1200
• Audio: source=Automatic (unless you know better…), codec=AAC, Mixdown=Stereo, Samplerate=48, Bitrate=160

Now, this works for me, and I have not done extensive testing. Your mileage may vary.

I created a preset that can go in the Handbrake installation directory, in the file “user_presets.xml”.

It looks like:

The above would have to be pasted under the root node of the user_presets.xml file along with any other custom presets you may have.

Good luck!

Last year I started noticing many of my friends were using Facebook messaging more than email itself. On average I’d have several messages from friends daily on Facebook, and the facebook statuses would tell me what I didn’t hear directly.

Now I’m beginning to notice that more and more people are becoming active on Twitter and checking their Facebook profile less often. I can’t help but think that it is in our nature to babble on about what we are doing/thinking and hold impromptu conversations.

Lately, I have even personally used Twitter as a replacement for email. I’m beginning to believe that the ultimate social medium on the internet will be extremely simple and be able to be mapped back to basic, ad hoc communication performed in the real world by humans all of the time. Using Twitter where email was used previously is a great example of this. When you have a conversation over email, you are choosing who can listen in. This is akin to holding a meeting. Sure, emails get forwarded to unintended recipients but the idea here is that email = private, limited audience. When you hold a conversation over Twitter, you have an audience in mind but in the back of your mind you realize that you are broadcasting your conversation to anyone who wishes to listen.

We seem to be moving into an era of transparency, where privacy is still a big concern but we are realizing that there are things we can easily share about ourselves on a continual basis that help other people to understand more about who we are, and as such allows them to interpret your more serious statements / blog posts, etc. This transparency is making online social networking really work. Facebook allows me to stay connected to people I know, while Twitter allows me to meet new people as well as stay connected with those I do know.

I wonder what the next progression will be?

• @duanechaos not Japan? #
• Ok, I have to stop reading twitter — fricken Fedor fight spoilers! #
• MMA is so much better to watch than boxing. #
• wow… Fedor… tidy victory. #
• woo hoo, 100 followers. only about 20,000 to go to catch up to @bitpakkit! #
• @matzeller also, VisualHub is no longer under development. in reply to matzeller #
• @snoopdogg has over 6,000 followers and is following nobody. Now that’s marketing old skool style, y’all. #
• Reading “Good To Great” by Jim Collins. So far, lots of head nodding happening here. #
• @AlanKhalfin I tried sugar in my Pho…but I think the Pho broth was marginal so I didn’t get the effect. Will try again… I wanna believe #
• @duanechaos how long in T.O.? #
• @duanechaos transit? #
• @duanechaos cramped schedule. Probably better than ship deadlines though… Ugh. #
• @yojibee geez! I thought Europe was (among other things) known for fast trains. Busses? Yuuuuck! #
• Twitter: The Life Transparent. Good? Who cares. #
• @davejohnson now that’s an idea… Let me know what your impressions in win7 are… #
• @matzeller what audio encoding settings did you try? I always go xvid with mp3 160 and that seems to be perfect for my uses… #
• Going from iphone back to Blackberry has been interesting. RIM: do we need “save?” Confirmations everywhere? Really. #
• @yojibee my mistake. Ne’er been to Norway. #
• @yojibee I learned that much this evening thanks to you #
• @MossyBlog red robin? That’s disgusting. Shame. #
• @MossyBlog I dunno… I’ve only been to red robin in Vancouver and it has a negative lasting impression. Ymmv. #
• Watching Clerks for the thousanth time I think. Bravo Mr. Smith. #

If you can’t eat it, why not make a cozy and stylish hat out of it?

Check it out, according to the Myers-Briggs assessment, I am an INTJ, or “mastermind”. I like that, it has a certain ring about it…

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INTJ
• http://www.bradstevens.com/articles/myers_briggs_intj.html <– This guy describes it very well…