I'm not up on my bees, but this was a big bee! He was very docile (…dying?) and in my in-laws yard. Easy target for the camera! Same yard as the baby spiders from way back when! Just two pics:
More Bee Pictures
May 13th, 2012
How I Make Coffee
March 18th, 2012Steps:
- Start kettle on the stove
- Measure 24 grams of beans
- Grind beans in bur grinder
- Wet Chemex filter
- Put grinds in Chemex filter
- Pour 30-60 grams by weight of water to bloom grinds
- Wait
- Poor a total of 240 grams by weight of water
- Enjoy
Notes:
- I use a scale
- My target is 10 to 1, water to grinds. For 24 grams, I would use 240 grams of water, by weight.
- My grinder is Kitchen Aid KPCG100OB Bur Grinder
- I use a small Chemex
- I get my beans from the wonderful Bica Coffee House
- The grind is set to be as course or fine as Bica grinds their poor overs
- I drink my coffee black
- I try to use beans that were roasted less than 3 weeks ago
- I store my beans in a hermetically sealed, light proof jar
- 8oz fluid ounces of coffee per serving is just right for me!
7" Android Tablet Spec Comparison
December 1st, 2011For a long time I've always thought that tablets are not of much use until you reach the 3rd or 4th use case. You know, you have a laptop on which you can have 20 tabs of browsers open, have a full blown IDE to code in or even run a local instance of your dev environment. The second use case is your smart phone for when you're on the go, don't want any bulk or weight but still want to surf and check emails and listen to music. It's not until you've got all those covered that you'll consider spending hundreds of dollars on a 3rd device (or 4th if you have a desktop).
The wife is considering having a bigger screen than her Incredible to watch Netflix and read blog posts, news and library books on. This will likely spill over into reading kids books for our kids Emmett and Violet as well. Below are the tablets we're considering. Each item has a product, review and purchase link in the first row. The second row is the presence or lack of a camera. While researching this piece I found Lisa G's 7" Tablet Smackdown on Mobile Tech and John P. Falcone's Kindle vs. Nook vs. iPad on CNET reviews quite helpful. Also, those that wanna blow past the 7" screen (to 7.7") and $400 price should consider waiting for the Samsung Tab 7.7 ($600-$800 at this writing). Of course that depends on where you fall in regards to my and Moore's law. Finally, if you're looking for cellular connectivity, consider the T-Mobile Springboard .
 Samsung Tab 7+ $399 |
 HTC Flyer $299 |
 IdeaPad A1 $229 |
 Kindle Fire $199 |
 Nook Tablet $249
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Product – Review – $ | Product – Review – $ | Product – Review – $ | Product – Review – $ | Product – Review – $ |
| Front and Back | Front and Back | Front | None | None |
| 1024 x 600 | 1024 x 600 | 1024 x 600 | 1024 x 600 | 1024 x 600 |
| 7.5" x 4.7" x 0.45" | 7.7" x 4.8" x 0.52" | 7.68" x 0.46" x 4.90" | 7.5" x 4.7" x 0.45" | 8.1" x 5" x 0.48" |
| 12.1 oz | 14.82 oz | 14.08 oz | 14.56 oz | 14.08 oz |
| dual-core 1.2GHz | 1.5GHz | 1.0GHz | dual-core 1.0GHz | dual-core 1.0GHz |
| WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS | WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS | WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS | WiFi | WiFi |
| 16GB Int & MicroSD | 16GB Int & MicroSD | 16GB Int & MicroSD | 8GB Internal | 8GB Int & MicroSD |
| Android 3.2 | Android 2.3.3 | Android 2.3 | Android 2.3 | Android 2.3 |
Update: I've added lil' thumbnails for each tablet.
Spiders abound
October 10th, 2011I never really paid much attention, but apparently there is a spider season. We're clearly in it! Tons of webs and tons of spiders. It's cool.
Here's one I found just around the corner of my house to compliment the web in my back yard from last post:
Spider web and Hard Drives
October 2nd, 2011What to do on a sunny weekend? Why, hose down your local spider web, line up hard drives and take videos and photos of them all, of course! It is pretty insane just how fast that hard drive head moves. Check out the video below.
Bees
September 3rd, 2011
Woody's B-Day
August 16th, 2011I had a lovely time tonight celebrating my friend Bill's birthday. Happy birthday Bill!
Here's a photo; be sure to click through to see them all:
B-Day Dinner Fun
As well as two videos from the night. You had to be there:
Raise my taxes, please
August 15th, 2011As we all know, there's been a lot of movement in all levels of government around budget cuts instead of tax increases. I was inspired to make today's post after reading Mr. Buffet's op ed in today's Times. Those of you that know me know that Warren and me are not anywhere near the same tax bracket. However, I feel we're severely short changing our future by defunding critical programs. Having less social services, poorer quality health care and, pun intended, dumbed down education system won't make us a richer country in the long run. Though I'm not sure I fully agree with the Nordic Model, there's one aspect I do agree with. I think we should raise taxes, yes for the rich, but across the board as well .
Raise my taxes, please.