Category: mostly unimportant

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Waning Attention Span

Remember this? ...'cause we don't get this anymore on televisions...

We’ve noticed, in recent years, that it’s getting harder and harder to sit down and watch a television series as it happens, with weekly episodes and breaks around Christmas and March (let alone summer…) where nothing new is on TV.  I’m sure most of this is due to the fact that we don’t have cable, so we’ve had to shift our viewing habits to some degree.  But even on Hulu, which has a “regular stream” of episodes, similar to what you’d have on a television network, we have a queue of 22 episodes right now waiting to be watched, across various different shows.  Some of those are “my” shows, some are Brooke’s, and others are for the both of us.  Our varied schedules (and toddler…) make it difficult to schedule that time for both of us to sit down and watch something.

As our schedules are difficult to manage, I’ve found that I prefer shorter TV seasons now.  There was a time when I balked at the idea of a show only having 6 or 12 episodes in a season, but now I can’t imagine getting through the 22 episodes most traditional networks seem to favor.

Case in point: “The Walking Dead” is a show on AMC that is based on a comic book about the zombie apocalypse (though it’s really more about how the human survivors deal with it, and less about the zombies themselves).  The first season was 6 episodes, and the second season is 13 episodes.  The first season is on Netflix streaming.

I watched all of it on Saturday.

So, because there was a shorter season, the writers were able to tell a compact, yet full story that lasted throughout their season.  They weren’t trying to keep a story line going over 22 episodes, but it also wasn’t a serial a la your typical cop drama.  Each episode was connected, made you want to watch the next one, and kept you engaged.  There were no breaks for you to lose track of what’s going on (granted, I watched it all in one day, but the show premiered on AMC with a weekly episode over 6 weeks).

I’m having the same issue with video games now, too.  I’ve been trying to work my way through “Mass Effect 2,” a sci-fi role-playing game I picked up for $5 awhile back.  Games like this take at least 20 hours to complete, while many can immerse you in the world for at least 60 hours.  Now, it isn’t unusual to spend 60 hours playing a video game, but I’m finding it difficult to keep going back to that game because the story is complicated, it’s spread over a lengthy period of time, and if I can’t go back to it within a few days, I forget what I did before.

I guess I’m saying that my attention span, or at least, the amount of time I have to devote to things that require such attention, has waned.  I just don’t have the time anymore for 60 hour games or 22 episode TV shows spread over a full season.  I’d much rather play a shorter game, or one that can be enjoyed in shorter bits of time.  I’d much rather watch a 6-12 episode season of a show that Brooke and I can watch within a few weekends.  We can get a clearly defined story and won’t forget what happened “last time on…”

Thankfully, this is a purpose Netflix is well-suited for.  Shows like “Downton Abbey,” a critical darling recently, has 7 episodes in its first season.  “Mad Men” has 13 episode seasons.  “Breaking Bad” has 13 episode seasons.  “Doctor Who” as between 13 and 15 episodes per season.  Each one of these have a general story arc that takes place over that time frame, as well as the individual “bits” that make each episode distinct.  You’ll notice a trend that all these shows are either British or from the cable networks, both of which apparently figured out how to achieve excellent storytelling decades ago.  It’s no wonder these kinds of shows are the ones that win Emmys.

It just seems like shows along these lines are easier for me to digest now, rather than being bothered with the Law & Orders or CSI:s on network television.  It isn’t even because the subject matter is stale:  it’s because they’re just too long.

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“We walking! We walking!”

Red for Brooke; Blue for Me.

Well, to some degree we are.  Meg likes to say “We walking! We walking!” whenever we go on a walk, so it seemed appropriate…

After over a month of using our pedometers, here’s what the data’s looking like.  Overall, you can see a few breaks in the chart where someone didn’t use a pedometer.  The blue line is me; the red one is Brooke.  As of today, the Average for each of us is 6062 steps/day for Brooke and 5987 steps/day for me.  To be honest, I’m somewhat astounded with how close together those numbers are.  I’ve shown the averages below along with Standard Error bars.

Red for Brooke; Blue for Me.

Now, we’re supposed to be walking 10,000 steps per day.  We only actually did that once each, and got close on a few occasions.  As a reminder, 2000 steps is approximately 1 mile for the average person, so that means we’re both walking around 3 miles per day, give or take.  Not too bad, but could be better.

I should note that I generated these with Google Docs and, for some reason, it won’t let me annotate the Legend on the graphs to associate a name with a color.  Oh well.  Perhaps I’ll e-mail Google and complain about their free service… 😛

 

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Harry Potter and the Digital Copy

This week saw the announcement and launch of the Harry Potter franchise on e-book formats, though the details of this particular deal are remarkably different from previous, “traditional” book launches on Amazon’s Kindle or B&N’s Nook.  Through the Pottermore website, you can buy the first three books for $8 each and the final four books for $10 each.  Once you buy a book through Pottermore, you can choose up to 8 different formats to get that book, so if you want it through Amazon, B&N, Sony, Kobo, Google Books, etc., you can do it.  Buy it once, read it where you like.  Once you assign it to a format (e.g. Amazon), you can download it as many times as you want through that carrier.

For the uninitiated, this is not how it usually goes, and this is a problem that the “Power of Potter” is helping solve.  It used to be that you could go to any bookstore you want and buy that book.  You could sell it, you could move it, you could loan it to a friend, and you could pass it down to your kids someday.  With e-readers, it doesn’t work like that.  If you buy a book from Amazon for your Kindle, but then you decide to switch to the Nook, you don’t get to take that book with you: you have to buy it again.  Furthermore, while you can loan said book to friends, you can only do it if they have the same e-reader format (i.e. Kindle can lend to Kindle and Nook can lend to Nook, but not to each other…though there are ways around it…), and you can only do it for something like 2 weeks at a time.

Then there was another thing I recently read about what J.K. Rowling did with the “Potter” books, specifically with regards to libraries:

Among the other innovations Rowling offers is the ability to download up to eight digital copies of each book, either for use on another device or for lending. Again, this seems like an obvious feature that e-book publishers could provide — since digital copies effectively have no cost — but very few do. And at a time when publishers either don’t allow their books to be loaned through libraries at all (as most of the Big Six do not) or have jacked up the prices they charge libraries (as Random House recently did), the Potter books can be loaned an unlimited number of times, and the lending license lasts for five years.

This is a big deal.  Publishers have complained since e-readers first took hold that they lose revenue when libraries lend out e-reader copies of books.  With physical books, libraries would buy books for a flat fee and then lend them out, but the understanding was that libraries would have to buy new books to replace others that had undergone too much wear and tear.  This doesn’t happen with digital copies of books, however, so the publishers created licenses that granted libraries a limited number of “slots” for each book (i.e. the number of people that can have a copy of the book at a given time) and a limited number of “lends” (i.e. the number of times each “slot” can be sent out).  Libraries have found e-books to be very useful to their patrons, so they’re getting popular, but the book publishers still aren’t reaping the revenues they think they should.  Thus, as mentioned above, publishers like Random House are trying to either reduce the number of “lends” for each license, or increase the cost of the license.

Because of the power behind the “Harry Potter” brand, Rowling is able to buck this trend.  She holds the rights, she dictates the terms.  And for once, the individual in control realizes they have enough money, so they do what’s fair.  You get that license for a Harry Potter book and it can be loaned out to as many people that want it and the license needs to be renewed every 5 years.  Spectacular.

The article quoted above also quoted the new CEO of Pottermore, Charlie Redmayne, who used to work at HarperCollins.  He was talking about what book publishers could learn from the music industry as they went through similar “growing pains” a decade ago:

My view is that the one thing we should learn from the music industry, is that one of the best ways of fighting back against piracy is making content available to consumers at a platform they want to purchase it on, and at a price they are willing to pay, and if you do that most people will instinctively want to buy it.

I’ve said this before, so I won’t go over it again.  Suffice to say, I agree completely.

Regardless, I’m glad that J.K. Rowling is shifting her considerable weight in the industry to move the ball a bit closer to where it should be.  It’s great to see some progress on this front.

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The Chemicals Between Us

As is the way I hear about most things, I was listening to NPR’s On Point this week, talking about Household Cancer Hazards.  Specifically, they were referring to a study from the Silent Spring Institute that looked at a variety of frequently used household cleaners, sunscreens, beauty products, air fresheners, and more.  They posted a detailed fact sheet with a summary of their findings here.

Generally speaking, the authors looked at these products in different ways, combining “conventional” products into a single sample, and “alternative” products into their own individual groups.  Part of the rationale was to keep costs of the study down by combining 42 samples into a single treatment group, but in some ways, it’s almost more informative as a single product may not cause health risks, yet the combination of that product with another product could yield some risk.

USA Today reported “chemicals that disrupt hormones or affect asthma were found in all 42 of conventional products sampled, as well as in most — 32 of 43 — of the alternative products billed as safer, including some by Seventh Generation, Jason Natural Products and Aubrey Organics.”  Forbes also reviewed the work, citing “lab tests detected 55 chemicals of concern–including parabens, phthalates, bisphenol A (BPA), antimicrobials, cyclosiloxanes, glycol ethers, and fragrances–in the conventional product samples tested and also found 41 concerning chemical compounds in all but 11 alternative products. Very few of these chemicals were included on product labels.”  The Forbes article and the original On Point link both include a list of the 11 products tested that contained none of the target chemicals.

The On Point interview with the authors was enlightening, as always, but they made sure to point out that people shouldn’t be quick to throw away all their cleaning supplies and switch back to baking soda and vinegar.  Moderate use of some cleaning supplies is fine: they’re mostly concerned with the aggregate level of chemicals found in households today and the fact that we, as a society, could stand to reduce them to a degree.

The authors did point out that triclosan is found in quite a few different cleaning products.  It’s used primarily as an antibacterial agent, however it’s currently under review by the FDA because it also acts as a hormone mimetic.  For the most part, using antibacterial products is no better than a proper washing with soap and water, so it’s a component that could be limited from many products.

Their primary example came from fragrances.  Their Summary Fact Sheet said that “Sunscreens and fragranced products — including air fresheners, dryer sheets, and perfume — had the largest number of target chemicals and some of the highest concentrations.”  So as they put it, if you can get the same function you’re looking for without additional fragrance, that’s one way to limit your exposure across a wide array of cleaning products (i.e. if you can get unscented deodorant or fabric softener, even if it’s a “conventional” product, it makes a difference).

Brooke’s made something of a push over the past few years to try and reduce our use of chemicals around the house, partially for health reasons, but mostly out of cost.  A bottle of 409 is pretty expensive when compared to a spray bottle of baking soda and white vinegar.  On the other hand, Brooke’s homemade dishwashing detergent doesn’t clean quite as well as a cheap box of conventional detergent (though she’s still experimenting with the mix).

In general, it’s a good idea to evaluate the products we all have around the house, getting rid of ones we don’t need and keeping the ones we do.  I’m exposed to enough chemicals in the laboratory environment already: I don’t need it at home, too.

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Walking

Mine's the yellow one. No. Really.

In an effort to try to monitor our physical fitness (or lack thereof), we opted to get a few pedometers so, at the very least, we know how much walking we’re doing every day.  The goal is 10,000 steps in a day, which is, on average, around 5 mi.  On our first day, you can see we didn’t quite hit that…

Part of the issue I’m having is in placement of the pedometer.  It comes with a ~4 in strap with a clip on the end, so it’s easy to put in different places.  These particular pedometers operate on two axes, so you can’t just leave it in your backpack or purse: you have to have it in a vertical position, not horizontal.  As such, on the first day, I put the pedometer in the small change pocket of my corduroy pants.  The second day, I put it in the change pocket of my slacks, however that pocket is down inside the main pocket, not up higher on the hip.  On that day, I recorded over 10,000 steps, though I don’t think I really doubled my steps over the previous day.  On Friday, I tried clipping it to my belt and having it hang into my left pocket and I was back down to around 5,000 steps again.

My guess is that the constant motion of my legs, due to over a decade of drumming, could affect the pedometer, but I probably won’t know that until further data comes in.  These pedometers save 7 days worth of data, but I’m recording it in a Google Docs file so we get a more “visual” interpretation of our progress.

Today, I’m wearing a dress shirt, so I have the pedometer clipped up on my torso, hanging down underneath my shirt.  This is the last position for a pedometer I can think of, and probably isn’t all that good of one, as your torso tends to stay more “stable” and feel less movement than your legs do.  That’s what a few years of marching percussion leads to, at least…

Anyway, I’ll probably post from time to time on this.  It’s my first time trying to use a pedometer.  Brooke used one after we first got married but stopped using it.  We figure that if both of us are using one, it’s easier to hold each other accountable, at least to some degree.

Still, it’d be nice if there were a GPS and Wifi-enabled one that could upload the data to some remote server once a day.  Sure, I could use my phone for this purpose, but it’s quite a bit bigger than these pedometers, and most people don’t want to clip a phone to their bodies… 😛

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Pirates on the High Seas (of the Internet)

I read a pretty spectacular article from Forbes.com today about how the MPAA and RIAA are fighting a losing battle against piracy.  The article echoes statements I’ve made in the past, though not on this blog (…that I can find, anyway…).

The author is blunt and to the point: the movie industry is being dragged kicking and screaming to a future that practically all their customers want, and they’re losing revenue in doing so.  They could make their money back on volume by making their movies a). easier to access, and b). cheaper.

The primary problem movie studios have to realize is that everything they charge for is massively overpriced. The fact that movie ticket prices keep going up is astonishing. How can they possibly think charging $10-15 per ticket for a new feature is going to increase the amount of people coming to theaters rather than renting the movie later or downloading it online for free? Rather than lower prices, they double down, saying that gimmicks like 3D and IMAX are worth adding another $5 to your ticket.

They have failed to realize that people want things to be easy. Physically going to the movies is hard enough without paying way too much for the privilege. Going to a store and buying a DVD instead of renting or downloading is generally an impractical thing to do unless you A) really love a particular movie or B) are an avid film buff or collector.

Here’s the part I’ve been most concerned by: rising ticket prices.  Why go to a movie theater to spend $10-$15 on a ticket, plus an additional $10+ on “food?”  Granted, I have a toddler so my movie viewing in theaters has decreased tremendously in the past few years anyway, but with the advent of Netflix, I have all kinds of things to watch, and now I have the will to wait until a movie comes out on DVD.  Especially when the summer blockbusters are looking more and more like that “Battleship” ad you saw during the Super Bowl.  Now, if I could see a non-IMAX, non-DTS movie in the theater and get a medium-sized non-refillable soda for $10?  I’d do that.  No question.

Finally, the author suggests a solution to this problem: the movie industry needs their equivalent of the gaming industry’s digital distribution platforms (e.g. Steam). Heck, they need Apple’s iTunes.  Make buying the product so stupid simple that it takes less effort to buy it than it does to steal it.  As he points out, it takes 7 steps to download a movie illegally, and depending on your internet connection, you could have an HD-quality movie in a half hour.  If the movie industry would just get behind an Apple or Amazon model of 1). find movie, and 2). click “buy” (for a reasonable price).

Let us recall music piracy of the late-90s/early-2000s for a moment.  Back then, you could go on Napster or Kazaa and search to find music you wanted, but you’d easily find tens or hundreds of the same track, each one with different sound qualities.  You could easily download a track you thought was good, but after downloading, you’d find actually had multiple “hiccups” in the file.  iTunes streamlined the process.  Search to download one song that you knew was of relatively high quality and was consistent with the rest of your iTunes library.  Moreover, you’d see that you could get a song for $1, but the entire album for $10, undercutting what was easily $15 at most brick-and-mortar retailers.  So in many respects, at least with iTunes, there was a chance you’d “up sell” your customer on getting the whole album, rather than just a single song.

iTunes made it easy and people flocked to it.  Does music piracy still happen?  Absolutely, but now, people have a reasonable, viable alternative that I’d argue most people consider before pirating albums.

Steam did the same thing for the gaming industry, making it stupid simple to download a digital copy of a computer game without having to search through seedy sectors of the internet looking for a pirated copy (that could include viruses or other malware).  They can even upgrade your graphics drivers and more for you when you install the game, streamlining the process further to make life for the consumer that much better.  Many PC games are released day and date with their “physical media” counterparts.  In many cases, you can actually have the game downloaded and then get it “unlocked” at midnight on its release day.  For PC games, you can’t get much more convenient.  You don’t even have to get out of your pajamas…

If piracy has taught us anything it’s that the movie industry thinks that an audience watching their movies on a computer or TV screen, while that same movie is still out in theaters, is important.  If this is really the case, the movie industry should do the smart thing and release movies online day and date with their release in theaters.  Charge $10 to rent it, making the cost comparable with a ticket to the theater (though that $10 is then divided up among the number of people watching the movie in your living room).

Obviously, some people don’t care if the movie is in IMAX or has super-duper Dolby Digital Sound or smell-o-vision: they just want to watch the damned movie.  They don’t want to deal with crappy popcorn prices.  They don’t want to deal with screaming kids or people talking through the whole thing.  They don’t want to fight for a decent seat in a packed theater.  They don’t want to drive their car and park in a lot.  They don’t want to pay upwards of $30 to see a movie on a Saturday afternoon.  There are any number of reasons folks don’t want to go to a movie theater, while others still like going.  There’s no reason the movie industry can’t cater to both demographics and make money doing it.

So, take heed, Movie and TV Industry. You’re being surpassed by other content purveyors.  Make it easy to access your content and I assure you, people will return to you and buy more of your stuff.

And stop taking your anger out on Netflix…that isn’t helping anything…

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Homemade Presents for Christmas-Updated!

Now that we’re a full month out from Christmas, I thought I’d share our “homemade” Christmas gifts with you. Our house was a mess from the time we moved in in late October until… ummm, actually, there are still boxes that need to be unpacked. But, we managed to give some pretty cool and personalized gifts. In the end, I don’t think we saved very much money, but the gifts we gave were definitely worth far more than anything we would have been able to purchase for the same amount. I thrifted/repurposed/cleared out my stash for most of these projects, so not only did we end up with a fairly inexpensive gift list, but also with a very “green” holiday!  Helped to offset our vapid consumerism the rest of the year, I suppose!  We probably won’t go to this extreme in the future, but will definitely add homemade touches and do a few things here and there!

The list:

  • Handkerchiefs, both two sided with flannel and unhemmed hand dyed knit
  • Pocket squares
  • Shaving cream
  • Wool cooler cups/koozies (I learned how to do a blanket stitch for those!)
  • Apple cider mustard
  • Alcohol:  black pepper vodka, ginger-orange rum, creamsicle rum, cranberry vodka, cherry bounce
  • Vanilla extract
  • Hot cocoa mix
  • Pajama pants
  • Spiced nuts
  • About a million vanilla-peppermint soy candles
  • Vanilla-peppermint lip balm
  • Frosted votive candle holders
  • Scarves, scarves, more scarves, and flower pins
  • “Cream of everything” soup mix
  • Star crayons for Meg’s school friends
  • Cloth napkins
  • Framed handprints
  • Granola
  • Coffee Beans (ok, not made by us, but by people we know!!)

For full-size version of these images, click on over to our Picasa album.

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Cabin Fever 2012

This is an India Brown Ale in the tasting glass you get for attending the event. Mmmm!!

We went to Schlafly’s annual Cabin Fever event this past weekend at their Maplewood restaurant, the Bottleworks. It’s always held around this time of the year as their Winter Festival, featuring somewhere around 30 of their beers.

Generally, you pay $25 for a ticket (or $30 at the door, but it’s always sold out if you wait that long) and, in exchange, you get a nifty tasting glass and eighteen 2 oz samples of various beers.  As it’s wintertime, the beers tend to be “high gravity,” meaning they’re a bit heavier and tend to have a higher alcohol content.  They always have a few of their lighter beers on tap, too, but the big draw is their other fare.

Now, you say, “well Andy, that doesn’t sound like very much beer for the money you’re spending.”  To a degree, you’re right, but the kind folks doling out the beer are kind enough to a). “forget” to bring along a Sharpie to mark off your ticket, and b). start at 2 oz of beer, and as the afternoon wears on, the volume increases.  So in the end, you can get plenty of beer and taste just about anything you want to.

In the Picasa album that’s accompanying this post, you’ll see pictures of the list of beers that were available, including a brief description of each one, and my own marks to show which ones I had.  You’ll see that I actually did get all 18 beer tastings…

…but my ticket only had maybe 5 of them marked off…  😛

There were quite a few great beers on that list that we tried.  The India Brown Ale (pictured above) was probably my favorite, as it was pretty different from others I’ve had before.  The similar, yet different, India Wheat Ale was also pretty good, but the hops didn’t seem to gel as well with the “wheat beer” flavor as it did with the “brown ale” flavor as before.  The Raspberry Coffee Stout was also exceptional, with a flavor leaning closer to the “raspberry” than the “coffee,” yet not as fruity as you might expect.  I had figured I’d prefer the Strawberry-Cocoa Porter over the Stout, but alas.

The Southern Hemisphere IPA was also shockingly good, mostly because it tasted recognizable, yet different. I mean, it was hoppy, as you’d expect, but the hops they used were something from Tasmania called “Galaxy,” so it turned out to have a very different flavor profile than other IPAs I’ve had in the past.  Believe you me, I hope they put that beer in bottles so I can get more of it!

Regardless, the event was quite fun.  Granted, the weather turned out to be cloudier and cold(i)er than the forecast had led us to believe, but with some good friends to crowd around and some strategically placed fire pits, we weren’t bothered all that much.  That, and high gravity beer tends to keep you all warm and fuzzy on the inside.

If you want some additional pictures of the event, STLhops was there taking pictures.  We even made it into one of them!

That's Stu, Brooke and my bald head off to the right...

I expect you all to go along next year. 🙂

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Trying Out A New Toy

A little snow won't dissuade the determined brewer.

For mid-January, yesterday ended up being a pretty gorgeous day for brewing. The sun was shining (occasionally) and the temperature held in the mid-40s for most of the afternoon. Thus, with Brooke and Meg out of the house, I opted to make the Chinook IPA Mom and Dad got me for Christmas.

This time, however, I also got to try out one of our new immersion wort chillers, so I figured I’d take the time to explain what this thing does and how to use it.  Generally, you boil your wort (i.e. unfermented beer) for about an hour, and you add hops and other components during that period.  However, you can’t add the yeast until the beer has cooled to below 100 F, though preferably closer to 80 F.  You need to cool it down as rapidly as possible, so you can hopefully get it into your sealed fermentation vessel as soon as possible, including yeast.

For previous batches, we’ve always just put that big 5 gal. pot in an ice bath, though we’d have to add additional ice and cold water throughout, frequently taking well over an hour to cool down.  Here’s where a wort chiller comes in: you run cold water through its copper tubing to act as a heat exchanger, removing heat from the wort quickly as cold water takes it away.

As this was my first time using said device, I had to do a few things first, namely, clean it.

Wort chiller, bathing in diluted white vinegar.

In the process of manufacturing, the copper tubing tends to have coatings of various oils and oxidized gunk that you don’t really want in your beer.  Reading from John Palmer’s “How To Brew,” I found that before you use the chiller for the first time, you need to clean it with some kind of industrial copper cleaner, or alternatively, just use distilled white vinegar.  The oils and oxidation products tend to come off the tubing in acidic solutions, and as beer is slightly acidic, all that stuff would end up in the beer.  Thus, bathing the chiller in diluted vinegar (the stuff from the store is 5% acetic acid) shines it up nicely.

After soaking for maybe 20 min in vinegar, I rinsed it off well and let it air dry while the beer was boiling.  When there’s about 10 min left in the boil, I then put the chiller in the brew pot, so the act of boiling would help sanitize the chiller.  Though I’d just cleaned it in vinegar, there could still be some “bugs” on the outside of the tubing, so the boiling should take care of it.

Once I’d reached the end of the boil, I carried the pot and chiller down to the basement and hooked it up to a sink using an old washing machine hose.

Looks appetizing, eh?

Cold water going in and through the tube, then coming out the other end.  I didn’t have a hose that fit that end of the tubing, so I just make sure to only keep the water pressure at something manageable, so it would stay within the sink.

The wort cooled down in about 20 min.  Good deal!

Now that the chiller’s been cleaned before, I shouldn’t have to soak it in vinegar again, though forum posts on the interwebs will tell you that some people insist on cleaning it every time.  In theory, all you should have to do is rinse it with water, then put it in the wort for 10 min while it’s boiling, then rinse it once you’re done.

All in all, it was remarkably easy and cut down on some of the total time spent brewing.  Now, we’ll just have to wait another month or so to see how the beer turned out!