A Sunday Food Adventure

Like I mentioned above, it’s been busy. I was in California, then a weekend of nerd stuff capped by a grilled cheese throw-down (yes, it was as awesome as it sounds) and just non stop work. Even this weekend I had mad chores to do, but they did result in a very clean garage.

We decided an adventure was in order. We tossed around a few ideas and decided to do something that I haven’t done but was still relatively close to home. We made a trip out to Queen Creek Olive Mill for lunch and to see what’s what.

Turns out this is a pretty awesome place! First of all, they produce all of the olive oils sold in the store and used in the restaurant. Straight oil, infused oil, specialty oil. Not only that, but as you can imagine, they also do more than a few things with olives including pickled and stuff with things you would have never thought about before.

Besides the store and cafe, they also have a huge picnic area! Today it was populated by people enjoying a local wine and having their lunch. Or just sitting out and enjoying another beautiful Arizona winter day. I also found out they are working toward using the space for hosting weddings in the very near future, and it’s a perfect fit for that.

The only item we brought home was a 4 pack of cupcakes (made with thier infused olive oils, of course) and a few photos. Oh, and Stella made me fetch a letterbox prize for her since it was buried under some scary rocks.

Pretty great way to end a pretty good weekend. Enjoy the photos below and if you ever need something to do on a Sunday in Arizona, a trip out to Queen Creek might be just what you need!

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Did the math last night. Cable TV is a total rip job.

January 24, 2012 6:53 am via Tweetbot for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@dbwilldo

db

Something Stella and I have been talking about for a long time is cutting out cable TV. It’s expensive, and honestly, we don’t need it. With technology and some clever, here is how we are going about getting rid of the TV portion of our cable bill.

1. Most of the shows that we watch are on Hulu
2. The shows that aren’t on Hulu are available through Amazon for $1.89 an episode
3. Over-the-air TV is pretty good in our area, or so we have heard.

Of course, all of this is made possible by the Roku box that quietly lives in our entertainment center. While it’s not as slick or matching-with-the-rest-of-our-Apple-gear as an Apple TV, it’s not horrible looking, fits nicely in the rack and has a good feature set. It has HDMI out as you would expect. It also has digital audio, which comes in handy for the audio channels available (like SOMAFM, Pandora and others).

While I would love to have an AppleTV, the cost of media through the iTunes store makes it less than attractive. To be able to use it as iTunes for the entertainment system isn’t that attractive either since we have a Roku Soundbridge that will play damned near anything we want.

Ideally, I would like to add a new Mac Mini to this system with a Thunderbolt drive attached. That would give access to the web as normal like YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr and everything else we use, plus iTunes and Hulu for those shows that are still web only. With Boxee or Plex installed, a Mini would be pretty rad. It’s a pretty low priority item, so the spend can’t be justified at this time, but hopefully one day soon.

Step 1 will be adding an external antenna to see what kind of over-the-air performance we actually get. Luckily they are cheap no matter where you go. Stay tuned as I will be documenting the entire process.

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Tech-wise, PHL is like a step back in time. No power, no wifi. Not cool.

January 12, 2012 6:09 pm via Tweetbot for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@dbwilldo

db

Since I didn’t have WiFi and I wasn’t able to get any work done, I did some writing.

It all started back in 2007 when I acquired my very first Macbook. It was the first generation with the Intel processor and I liked it. Alot. It’s been one of the most reliable PCs I’ve had and is still in active use today.

Jump ahead to 2009 when I got my iMac. 20″ to be exact. It’s been my workhorse, being used to generate countless websites, blog posts, photos and hours of video. As it stands, it’s about the 3rd most reliable PC I’ve ever owned and if it lasts another 2 years I will jump to the number 2 spot.

For the record, the PC I have ever owned was one I built myself. A PII700 running all Intel internals with Samsung drives and Windows 2000. Got about 5 solid years of use out of that before I upgraded to something a little speedier.

I title this post 100% Mac Shop because I have always had a copy of Windows running somewhere. Either in VM on the iMac or Macbook, or in the shape of a laptop or netbook. Friends, I am here today to let you know that is no longer the case.

Instead of getting a mobile device running Windows (and saving a bunch of money) I decided to go mobile on the Mac. And not a Macbook Pro either. A 13″ Macbook Air. Thin, light and limited on storage. A machine that I know will take advantage of dropbox and iCloud. A machine that I will use primarily for editing text (or coding WordPress themes). A machine that has enough space to offload photos and videos from week long events. And if I run out of space, there is always FTP or dropbox. A true portable machine.

I will be using this for light photo editing. I might even attempt video editing on it as well. For video, I’m going to almost bet that it will not be the greatest for encoding, so I will save that for the iMac.

Toss in my iPhone and there you have it! I’m all Mac. Only took me 5 years to get here too!

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Oh boy is the internet pissed at Godaddy this week! Turns out they supported SOPA (which they later changed their mind about). That was reason enough for quite a few folks to start pulling their domains and move them to different registrars. I know I did, but not because they supported SOPA. More like, that’s the straw that broke the camels back.

I’m transferring domains away from GoDaddy as fast as my checkbook will allow. I only have 8 or so left with them, and I hope to have them transferred to Hover by the end of January. This is a process I started earlier this year after Bob Parsons came home from Africa after spending some quality time shooting elephants. But that’s only part of why I’m moving my domains.

Another part is their famously awful user interface. Or the fact that they are the worst WordPress host. Or the fact that when trying to check out when purchasing anything you have to click through 10 different pages offering upgrades, magazine subscriptions and ginsu knives. But, like the other reasons, this is just a part of why I’m transferring away.

If we take a second to look at the graphic at the top of this post. That is a screen shot from my Gmail account. Please note the date stamps on each line. If you want to know why I’m transferring away from GoDaddy, it’s because they are practicing email spammers and there is no way to make it stop that I can find.

Buy a domain? 2 emails. plus the weekly “buy more domains” email. Have a domain? 9 months before it expires they start sending reminder emails to renew. As the date draws closer, the frequency of the emails increases until you are getting 2 per day (per domain). Once the expiration date has passed, they continue to send emails at the rate of not less than 1 per day per domain. And there is no way to make them stop.

Worse part is when you don’t want a domain name any more. I let about 10 go this year that I will never do anything with (or my customers won’t be using). And the damn emails never stop. It’s truly rediculous.

So, if the emails won’t stop, if the UI won’t change and if the check-out process won’t stop pushing ultra high security email and faxing from my rotary phone, then I’m out.

And now you know The rest of the story.

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Last weekend, the inaugural Arizona Balloon Classic took place at Wild Horse Pass in Chandler. Not really Wild Horse Pass, but a place called Rawhide. From their site:

>Witness more than 50 hot air balloons take flight both morning and night on November 18, 19 and 20 at Rawhide in Chandler, Arizona.* Don’t miss this unique visual spectacle during the perfect time of year.

50 is more than a bit of a stretch. The actual count on Sunday was closer to 12, and not a single one of them was there at sunrise. A fact I am supremely confident with since we were there at sunrise.

Once the balloons did show up, it was pretty amazing. I’ve never seen anything like this before, at least not up close and personal. Standing right next to each balloon as it was filled with hot air from propane torches that resembled rocket engines was awesome.

The main reason for us going was to snap some photos and video of the balloons, which I did using pretty much all of my gear.

That was shot with my Canon, which couldn’t be in the shot because it was busy taking the shot. Shots that can be seen in my Flickr stream.

And there is video. This video is comprised of video from my the The Flip Mino and Canon HF100. I was going to do some iPhone video in there, but decided against using a 3rd video camera because that’s just silly.

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Podcamp Arizona is coming up next week! November 12-13 at University of Advanced Technology. Click over for the full schedule of speakers and sessions and to get registered if you haven’t already. It’s free, so there is no excuse.

I’ll be giving 2 sessions. On Saturday at 10:15 I will be discussing podcasting and answering your questions. On Sunday at 11:15, I, with my pal Evo Terra, will be doing a session on actually making a podcast. You will be able to hear those at IMadeAPodcast.com Sunday and they will be available in iTunes. If you actually want to make a podcast, make plans to be there!

I will also be on the live stream for Podcamp AZ from 10:45 – 11:00 on Sunday morning. Details to follow. Make sure to follow me on Twitter for details as we get closer.

Can’t wait to see you there! Also can’t wait to make a podcast with you!

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For those of you that aren’t playing the home game, I’ve been in the process of catching up with Dr. Who. It’s taken me a few months to get through season 5, but I finally did last week. Not only that, but we’ve been recording season 6 from BBC America so that when I did finally get through season 5 we’d be ready!

Also, Stella has been working through here 40×40 list, and thought Dr. Who night would be a great time to clear another 2 items from her list; cooking all of the 10 most difficult recipes according to Epicurious. On for last night were numbers 6 and 8, paella and baked alaska.

And they turned out AMAZING. To be truthful, at least according to Stella, paella wasn’t that hard. She does make an amazing risotto, and paella is pretty close to the same thing. And the baked alaska, something I wasn’t sure I was going to like because of the merengue topping, but it was delicious. Cold ice cream, warm strawberry sauce and crispy merengue. It was delightful.

As for Dr. Who, we watched the Matt Smith Christmas Episode with friends. I liked it and am excited for the next 2 episodes. We also watched the latest Castle, another show that I’ve enjoyed since it started, and this season is shaping up to be another great one!

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Pictured above is the 6 remotes it takes to run the entertainment system at Camp Stella.

• TV
• A/V Receiver
• Roku XD|S
• Roku Soundbridge
• Cable Box/DVR
• Crappy DVD player (supports PAL, so shut up)

6 devices. 6 remotes. Until now. Thanks to our friend Jason, who, after seeing the above photo, sent us this.

That is the Logitech Harmony 670 Remote. You’ve seen this at stores thinking that it would be cool if you had one, right? I can say, without a doubt, that it is very cool to have one!

After a download and about 1 hour of programming I had it set to operate almost everything in the rack. When the TV button is pressed, the TV turns on, sets to the correct input and fires up the cable box (if it’s off). It would turn on the receiver and set the correct input too if I was using the receiver with the cable box (I’m not, yet). Watch a movie? Press a button and the TV changes to the Roku XD|S, stereo sets to the correct input and it even triggers a HOME button press on the Roku box. Listen to music through the Soundbridge is just as easy!

The controls make sense and the device seems pretty easy to use so far. In as much as it only takes one remote to do what previously took 2 or more, that was an easy task.

Don’t worry, full write-up to follow after we use it for about a week or so. I’m positive that it will be favorable.

HUGE thanks to Jason for hooking us up, quite literally! You should add him to your circles in G+ (he takes pretty rad photos) and follow his blog.

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I’ve always been fascinated with stop motion animation (remember Gumby?) and time lapse photography. Since I do not have the time to make clay bits move about, photography is more my speed.

It’s really simple. Find what you want to shoot, set the focus, set the invalometer to the desired time and walk away. Come back to a either a dead battery or full CF card (yes, my camera is old. Let it go) and transfer them in. The video above was created from over 500 shots taken every 3 seconds.

I have a photoshop action that I use to resize the images to 720p, bring them into Google Picasa (yes, on the Mac), set the frame rate and turn ‘er loose! Once I have a completed movie, I can edit again in iMovie (to add sound or mix it with something else), which I have done here.

As a bonus, this one is short enough that I was able to post it to my Flickr stream, something I haven’t updated in months!

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Ok, watch out.I'm wearing the red shirt today.You don't have a chance.

May 18, 2011 8:03 am via TweetCasterReplyRetweetFavorite

@dbwilldo

db

For those of you that might have missed this post from back in ’05.

I have about 3 red shirts actually. Everyone gets concerned or excited when I wear them because strange things usually happen. I become super creative. My thought processes become a bit more random, allowing me to come up with ideas nobody else even thought about. I get a little hyper.

It has actually been requested that on certain days for a certain meeting or function that I wear the red shirt. Or something comes up that “you’re gonna need the red shirt for that one db” gets thrown around.

I’m all about the red shirt.

Now usually, the red shirt is saved for that poor, unfortunate soul on Star Trek that dies a horrific and painful death caused by an alien laser death beam or something similiar. That’s not my case.

Used to be, the red shirt gave me power. It made me better than I was. Better. Stronger. Faster. And I think the power is back. Wearing the new red shirt today and I’m feeling a bit of a buzz.

I know it’s crazy. You can be skeptical. I know what I know.

And I know the red shirt is back.

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