You are here: Home / Archives for Personal

Donkey Kong Art

January 4, 2011 1 Comment

I have good friends. For example, Shayne. For Christmas he sent me the Donkey Kong wall art that I had mentioned I thought was really cool after seeing the wall art he put up in his kid’s room (Super Mario). It took me a couple weeks to get around to putting it up, but holy crap, I freakin’ love it!

Just for fun, I shot a time lapse video of me putting the artwork up last night. It was a perfect excuse to use the iphone’s TimeLapse app, the gorilla pod and the Glif iphone camera mount. (the site URL has geek right in it, so you should come to expect this…)

Thanks again, Shayne.

Twitter Comments

vegasgeek Donkey Kong Art http://vegasgeek.com/aij
Re-Tweet | Reply | View Tweet
Filed Under: Personal

Why I’m now a Bose customer for life

January 3, 2011 7 Comments
Bose AE2

When it comes to headphones, I usually stick to garden variety ear-buds. I’ve had several pair from Skull Candy and they do the trick nicely. Especially considering they cost under $20. But, I don’t always like to use ear-buds and would rather have a pair of over the ear headphones. A few years back, my friend Todd introduced me to the Bose Triport headphones and, even though they were a fair bit more than I normally would pay for headphones, I LOVED how they blocked out all background noise, were nice and light and sounded great. I was sold. I picked up a pair that weekend and have been using them ever since. That is, until recently.

About a year ago a piece of plastic broke on my Triports. The same had happened to Todd’s pair and he used epoxy to hold his together. I’m not nearly that handy and I just sorta dealt with it. They still worked, they still stayed on my head, I saw no reason to abandon them. However, a few months back, I started to notice that another piece of plastic had cracked on them. This crack was due to the previously broken piece not performing it’s function anymore and what’s worse, when this crack made it’s way to breaking, it would render the headphones useless. I had heard that Bose had a replacement policy for defective headphones, so it was time to make a call.

I called the local Bose outlet and confirmed that they do have a policy for defective products. Sweet! We headed in and when I got there, the employee was super helpful. I showed him the broken piece and the new crack. He pulled out a binder and looked up the model. He informed me that they no longer make the Triports, but there is a new model available and my current Triports had a $60 exchange. He took me over to the display where he let my try out the Bose AE2 model. After testing them out for a couple minutes, I was sold. They are nice and light, sound great and they are a better built pair of headphones than the Triports. What’s not to love?!? I asked how much this model costs and he informed me that they were $150. I was a little bummed that after the $60 for my defective triports, I was still going to drop almost $100 on a pair of headphones. That is until he corrected me. “No, you get this pair for $60 + tax.”

Bose didn’t have to offer me a credit on headphones I’ve owned for 3+ years, but they did. When I was ready (but not thrilled) to pay $90 for the replacements the employee didn’t need to correct me and save me an extra $30, but he did. I should also mention, when I handed him my headphones, he didn’t ask for a receipt, where I bought them, how long ago I bought them. He just asked how he could help.

Hey retailers, want to know how to make a customer for life? High quality product, very generous defect/return policy and great customer service. Sounds pretty obvious, doesn’t it? Then why do so many of you get it wrong?

Thanks Bose. I’ll definitely be back!

Twitter Comments

vegasgeek Why I'm now a Bose customer for life http://vegasgeek.com/krp
Re-Tweet | Reply | View Tweet
Filed Under: Personal Tagged With:

DIY Sangria

December 29, 2010 11 Comments
DIY Sangria

A couple months back I had the pleasure of going out to dinner with Chris Brogan at Texas de Brazil. When the waitress was asking us what we wanted to drink, Chris suggested a pitcher of sangria. I’m not a wine drinker, but agreed to split it with him. I am glad I did. It was my first time trying sangria, and it was VERY tasty.

Since then I ordered sangria at another place, and pretty much hated it. The main difference being the first sangria was made with red wine and the second used white wine. Well, at least now I know I need to ask if it’s red or white sangria before I order next time.

I had the brilliant idea of making sangria at the house for Christmas. I went online and checked out a few dozen recipes, but couldn’t find one that sounded exactly like what I wanted. So my wife and I just started making a list of items and headed off to the store to grab the ingredients and create our own version. We bought enough ingredients for 2 batches. We made the first batch the night before so we could test it out. If it was good, we’d match the recipe the next day. Otherwise, we’d tweak as needed. I’m happy to say that we liked the first version enough to make the same version both times. I had offered to share the recipe if all went well, so here you go!

DIY Sangria

Ingredients:
1 bottle red wine (merlot)
1 cup ginger ale
4 oz lemonade
12 oz pineapple juice
1 dozen grapes
1 lime
1 orange
1 green apple
3 tbs sugar

How to prepare
- Slice grapes in half
- Slice orange in to rounds
- Slice lime in to rounds
- Skin, core and dice apple
- Add grapes, orange, lime, apple and sugar to pitch
- Use spoon to mix and gently mash fruit/sugar
- Add wine, pineapple juice, ginger ale and lemonade
- stir
- refrigerate for an hour
- Serve over ice

What we’d do different
For being our first go at this, I’m pretty happy with the results. That being said, we’ve talked about some options for what we’d do differently next time around. Here are some of the things I plan to try tweaking:

- Replace lemonade with orange juice
- Use a cabernet instead of merlot
- Not include the slices of lime

If you end up making DIY Sangria, report back and let me know how you liked it. Or, if you tweaked it any, let me know what you tried and what the results were. I’m already looking forward to making another batch this weekend!

Twitter Comments

cosmopolitana RT @vegasgeek: DIY Sangria http://vegasgeek.com/4w9
Re-Tweet | Reply | View Tweet
vsecretpink RT @vegasgeek: DIY Sangria http://vegasgeek.com/4w9
Re-Tweet | Reply | View Tweet
SaraCrowe RT @vegasgeek: DIY Sangria http://vegasgeek.com/4w9
Re-Tweet | Reply | View Tweet
chrisbrogan RT @vegasgeek: DIY Sangria http://vegasgeek.com/4w9
Re-Tweet | Reply | View Tweet
vegasgeek DIY Sangria http://vegasgeek.com/4w9
Re-Tweet | Reply | View Tweet
Filed Under: Personal

Today, we work on us

December 17, 2010 6 Comments

I’m sure you’ve heard the proverb “The shoemaker’s children are often shoeless”, right? When you are running a service based business, it’s inevitable; you are going to wake up one day and realize that everything about your business is out of date. Your website has 6 month old pricing, your brochures have photos of products that are collecting dust in the basement by now. You get the idea.

A couple months back, my partners and I came to the realization that we have been spending so much time working on client’s that we have totally been neglecting things that will ensure the long term success of our own business. Some of the things were simple, like setting up a newsletter signup form. Not a big deal, but if we don’t take the time to do it, another year will fly by and I’ll be saying, “gee, I sure wish we had done this a year ago…”

We tried to squeeze in some time here and there to get some things updated, but something would always come up. This was going to take a shift in the way we do things. We needed to do something big.

Internal Work Only Days
Starting at the beginning of November, we instituted a new rule at the office; No outside client work on Fridays. We work long hours on Monday-Thursday helping our clients, but on Fridays it is all about us!

Making your own internal rules is great, but we still have to answer to clients. I was a little concerned about having to explain this to new and existing clients. You never really know how people will react. Every response has been overwhelmingly positive. A lady I spoke with earlier this week said, “Congratulations! I wish we could do the same here!”

To be clear, this doesn’t mean we shut off the phone and stop answering emails. We are definitely available for our clients if there is an emergency. If a server is on fire, we’ll drop what we are doing and get right on it. But, changing the color of a link from blue to purple can wait until Monday.

Our results have been great. We have some new projects that we are working on that we’ll be releasing pretty soon. None of these would have happened if he hadn’t taken the time to focus on ourselves.

Give it a shot. If you aren’t able to give up a day a week, maybe take a day or two a month. Something, anything is better than nothing!

Twitter Comments

dvineexpression RT @vegasgeek: Today, we work on us http://vegasgeek.com/ffc #successtips
Re-Tweet | Reply | View Tweet
vegasgeek Today, we work on us http://vegasgeek.com/ffc
Re-Tweet | Reply | View Tweet
Filed Under: Work

No new ideas Thursdays

December 6, 2010 Leave a Comment

I just finished watching this Ted talk given by Jason Fried (co-founder of 37signals) titled; Why work doesn’t happen at work.

This talk really hit home. For the final couple of years at my previous job we had enough meetings to make sure that it would be virtually impossible for people to get much done. What’s worse, just because the way my brain works, the lack of “getting stuff done” would turn in to stress. I would feel like I needed to come in earlier or stay later at the office until I had accomplished something productive. But, once you start going in early or staying late, that can cause stress in other areas of your life. It really was a no-win situation.

I’m happy to say, in my new gig, we don’t have a single scheduled internal meeting.

While listening to the Ted talk, Jason threw out the idea of “No talking Thursdays” and I literally laughed out loud. Not because I thought it was a silly idea. Quite the opposite, really. But, it reminded me of something my friend Jason Murphy and I had come up with a few years back; No New Ideas Thursdays. Here’s why:

Jason and had been friends and worked for the same company, but on two opposite ends of the building. Then, I got moved to an office right next to Jason’s. We weren’t working on the same team, per se. But, our goals were pretty similar and we would constantly chatter back and forth about how we could do this or that. The problem was, it wasn’t JUST work related stuff. We had a 1000 ideas for websites we wanted to build outside of work. Then we’d talk about how to build it, or how to market it, or software, or, or, or… It got to the point where we instituted No New Ideas Thursdays so that we would come in, sit down and actually work on one project for the entire day. It was amazingly helpful.

At 9seeds, we haven’t had to implement anything that drastic yet. Though, I believe we’ve each taken Radio Silence days where we just don’t start up IM or Skype and only check email every couple hours. If you have the opportunity, try it. It’s very productive!

If you work in a corporate job where you have to be somewhere from 9 to 5 (or 7 to 4 like at my previous job), take a few minutes and watch the video above. Then, send the link to your boss.

Twitter Comments

sdenike RT @vegasgeek: No new ideas Thursdays http://vegasgeek.com/guq
Re-Tweet | Reply | View Tweet
vegasgeek No new ideas Thursdays http://vegasgeek.com/guq
Re-Tweet | Reply | View Tweet
Filed Under: Work

Help Gilcrease Nature Sanctuary

November 3, 2010 Leave a Comment
gns-bird


A couple years back, I was really getting in to photography and was taking any and every opportunity to go out and shoot. So when I found out the photo meetup group was heading to the Gilcrease Nature Sanctuary on the other side of town, I jumped at the chance. After I got back, I took a selection of my photos and put them in a set on Flickr.

Fast forward to yesterday. I received a message on Facebook from somebody on the board of directors for Gilcrease. She informed me that there had been a fire at the sanctuary earlier this year and over 180 animals were killed. She was contacting me because of the photos I had posted; one of them was of her favorite bird, Angelo, who was lost in the tragedy.

Here are a couple youtube clips:

Photographing the birds that day was a lot of fun. I’m really bummed to hear that most, if not all of the birds we met and photographed had been killed.

If you have a few extra bucks sitting in your Paypal account, why not head over to the Gilcrease Nature Sanctuary website and donate. They can certainly use the help.

Twitter Comments

vegasgeek Just posted: Help Gilcrease Nature Sanctuary. http://vegasgeek.com/gns
Re-Tweet | Reply | View Tweet
Filed Under: Personal, Photography Tagged With:

New Digs

September 2, 2010 2 Comments
vegasgeek

About 3 years ago I did something a bit crazy, I moved all my content from geeeek.com over to JohnHawkinsUnrated.com. The old domain just didn’t feel like home to me anymore. During the past few years I’ve built up a bit of an audience, so making the switch again is a little bit crazy since I have some pretty decent search engine rankings on JHU. But here we are, starting all over again back at square one! Welcome to VegasGeek.com!

VegasGeek has been my online persona for the better part of 8 years. The domain name was already taken so I had to go with another option. Over the past 5 years or so I have made several attempts to purchase the domain as it switched hands 2 or 3 times. Finally, a few months back, I was able to get my hands on it and I can tell you right now, I’m not letting go of it any time soon! Finally, a domain that FEELS like home!

Switching all your content from one domain to another is no small process and not without it’s share of obstacles. If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed a bit of spam I sent out yesterday to the tune of 125 tweets in about 2 minutes before Twitter put me on time out. I had exported the content from JHU and forgot to turn off my AutoTweet plugin for new posts on the new site. So as I imported 500+ blog posts, well, you see where I’m going. If you caught the full brunt of my twitter-splosion, sorry about that!

If you were already awesome enough to be following my RSS feed for JHU, you’ll need to switch it over to the new RSS feed. I also created a new FaceBook page where I’ll hook up the auto-post if that’s the way you are most used to finding my posts.

Oh, I should also mention that I’ve moved the photo-blog that was taking up residence at VegasGeek.com for as short time over to http://micro.vegasgeek.com/. This is a project I’m really enjoying. I take the photos and write the entire blog post from the iPhone. It’s kinda fun. That site has it’s own RSS feed if you’d like to check it out, you can follow it here.

Thanks for sticking with me as I bounce around the interwebs a bit. This should be the last time for quite a while.

Cheers!

Twitter Comments

vegasgeek Blog Post: New Digs! http://vegasgeek.com/cx1
Re-Tweet | Reply | View Tweet
Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: ,

5 iPad RSS reader apps reviewed

August 23, 2010 5 Comments
Google Reader

I have been on the hunt for an iPad app for reading the 100+ RSS feeds I’m currently following. With so many feeds to deal with it’s important that I find one that meets a few critical features:

  • It must pull in my feeds from my Google Reader account where I manage them all
  • It MUST sync back the items I have read on the iPad
  • I want to be able to share the stories (perferably back through Google Reader)
  • It should have an intuitive & comfy interface

So far I’ve tried 5 different readers on the iPad. Some are free, others cost a couple bucks. The price of the app isn’t considered during these reviews.

Here is how each stacked up to my feature requirements above and my personal review of each.

Google Reader

Note: I almost didn’t include this in the list because the Google app isn’t a native app. When you click on Reader it simply opens up Safari and takes you to a mobile version of your Google reader account. But, since I AM able to read my feeds using it, I decided to keep it on the list.

Pulling feeds:
Obviously it is able to pull my feeds from my Google Reader account. If it couldn’t, I’m sure some programmers at Google would be looking for new employment.

Syncing read items:
The sync is virtually instant. When I click on an article on the iPad, I can hit refresh on my desktop browser and the unread message count is updated. The fact that it happens so quickly isn’t really that important, but I thought it was at least worth noting

Share Stories:
If you are familiar with how the share/like/share with note/email functionality works on the desktop version of Google reader, well, this one is virtually identical. Sharing is a simple index finger tap away.

Interface:
The interface is pretty basic. It has the standard Google Reader obtions to view all, starred or shared item, people you follow, recommended items plus all the folders you created yourself. Tapping one of your folders brings up a list of all the feeds in the folder. Tapping the folder name again shows you a list of all unread items from all feeds in that folder listed chronologically.

My review of Google Reader:
Based on how well it does everything above, you’d think I really like it, but I don’t. Yes, it handles all the Google-centric functionality just fine, but from a user experience standpoint, it feels very sterile. I’m a bit of a Google fanboy, so I really want to like it. I think a lot of it stems from it being a browser based service rather than a standalone app. That’s probably just me being weird, I know.

If you are simply looking for a no-frills way to read your feeeds, this is going to do the trick nicely. If you want a little sexy to go with the muscle, keep looking.

River of News

Pulling feeds:
During the inital app setup, you give it your Google login information and it retreives your unread articles from your feeds. It keeps them nicely sorted in the folders you create in Google Reader.

Syncing read items:
This one stumped me for a while. It didn’t seem like there was any way at all to sync the feeds. No matter how many articles I would read, it would never update my Goofle account. A little more digging and I found that in the settings there is an option to toggle “Mark items as read while scrolling.” I turned that on and from that point forward it worked like a charm.

Share Stories:
As far as I can tell, there isn’t a way to share back to Google Reader, but you can share to Twitter, Facebook, Instapaper, Tumblr and a couple others.

Interface:
The interface is pretty simple, but I definitely like the 2 column, list/content format.

My review of River of News:
This app is pretty decent. Like I said, I like the 2 column layout, but I’d like to be able to see the title and brief intro (maybe on the left after I select a feed) instead of having to scroll through the entire articles on the right. The main reason being, if I’ve activated the setting to mark items as read, I don’t seem to be able to easily mark an item as unread if I want to save it for later reading.

Pulse News

Pulling feeds:
You have the ability to provide the app your Google account info, but that doesn’t mean you are ready to start reading all your feeds. You have to scroll through your list and individually select which feeds you want to add to the app.

Syncing read items:
Yes, it syncs the items you read in the app back to your Google account.

Share Stories:
You aren’t able to share to Google Reader it appears, but you are able to post to Facebook, Twitter, Instapaper or send via email. Now, insert a heavy sigh. There is a heart icon on the page that lets you add the article to your “pulse.” While messing around with the app I did this a few times before figuring out what exactly it was doing. Before I knew it I had signed up for an account and now have a new “blog” of shared items. You can check it out at http://vegasgeek.pulsememe.com. Or don’t, I won’t be updating it.

Intuitive Interface:
I understand what they are going for, but for me it just misses the mark. You scroll up/down to see your feeds, you scroll left/right to see the posts in a feed. Each feed takes up a pretty sizeable chunk of screen realestate.

My review of Pulse News:
I don’t really have many good things to say about this app. I don’t like having to select which feeds I want to read in the app. I don’t like that it shows the last 10 items for each feed no matter if I’ve read them or not. If you have a bunch of feeds, it’s not real simple to find the unread post. The only visual clue is the title is written in white for unread and grey for read. I can appreciate what they are going for in this app, but it completely misses the mark for me.

NewsRack

Pulling feeds:
It sure does. Store your Google login information and it pulls your feeds and folders.

Syncing read items:
Yes, it does sync back to Google and it seems to happen instantly.

Share Stories:
This app lets you share stories to Google reader, Twitter, Delicio.us, Facebook and has an in-app send-by-email function, too.

Interface:
The interface is pretty straight forward. It uses the 2 column layout as well which I like. I also like that when you select a folder it slides in all the feeds for that folder. Clicking on a feed brings up the title and very brief intro for each post.

My review of NewsRack:
Up until recently, this had been my default RSS reading app. I like but don’t love the interface, and it has a ton of options in the setting page. But, I had been having a lot of problems with my feeds not syncing back and forth with Google. It was also requiring that I manually click the update button in order to sync my read items. These issues are what sent me in search of a new RSS reader a short while back. And of course, while working with the app doing the research for this post, it worked better than it ever has before. Ahhh, timing…

Reeder

Pulling feeds:
When you first install the app you give it your Google Reader login and it automatically pulls in your feeds and keeps them sorted in your folders.

Syncing read items:
As with Google Reader itself, the sync is basically instant. There’s a handy circle icon in the top right to mark an article as unread if you’d like to keep it for desktop viewing as well. That feature is also virtually instant.

Share Stories:
Not only can you share your articles to Google Reader (one tap on the rss icon in the top right corner), but it will also let you send the post to a number of other services like Delicio.us, Instapaper, ReadItLater and Twitter. There wasn’t the ability to share to Facebook, which I found a little odd given the rest of the services available.

Interface:
Every screen on this interface has what feels like the right amount of functionality. They have one touch buttons down the left side and across the top to perform specific actions based on the page you are on. None of it feels out of place.

My review of Reeder:
I can sum this one up pretty easily, I love this app. Love it. When it comes to reading articles, the Reeder interface has been the best of the lot. I really like the two panel layout and being able to quickly click between articles and having them displayed in the larger right hand column, still offering me a few of the list down the left.

Conclusion
While there really aren’t any losers in this list, they all serve their purpose nicely, for me there is definitely a clear cut winner. Reeder stands out as the best of the bunch. I’ll keep the others installed and will check them out again when new updates become available, but until then, Reeder is my reader of choice.

Is there an RSS reader app I should include on my list? Tell me about it in the comments. I’ll gladly check it out!

Filed Under: Reviews, Technology Tagged With: , ,

RoloPress review

August 15, 2010 11 Comments
RoloPress Layout

Since starting 9seeds back in October, we’ve collected a fair amount of contact information for clients and prospects. The trouble is, we don’t really have a single place where we can keep that information and share it between our geographically diverse team. I’ve tried a few CRM programs like Sugar CRM and Highrise, but a CRM is way more than what we need. I’m just looking for a simple way to store my contacts and make them available to the people in our company.

I entertained the idea of building my own contact manager as a theme for WordPress using Custom Post Types and Taxonomies. But before I wrote my own, I sent a request on Twitter asking if one already existing. That is when I was introduced to RoloPress.

From their About page:

RoloPress is an Open Source Contact Manager, licensed under GPL v2, and built on the WordPress platform (also, Open Source). That means that you can download it, modify it, do whatever you want to it. Isn’t Open Source great!

I took a quick look at their demo site, and at first glance, it appears to be exactly what I’m looking for. So far, so good. Time to test it out myself. After downloading the core theme and the child theme I was ready to get started!

Installation:
I had a little trouble, albeit self-inflicted, with the installation when I tried running the theme on an existing WordPress install on my development server. It did not care for the existing content in my database. So to install it, here is what I suggest:

  1. Set up a fresh install of WordPress
  2. Delete all default pages and posts
  3. Upload the RoloPress core and child theme
  4. Activate the child theme

Side note: If you are planning to run RoloPress on a server accessible via the internet and don’t want to give everybody access to your information, you should install a plugin like Force User Login.

Setup:
RoloPress is VERY customizable. After the install the first you need to do is select one of the many (13) page layout options by going to Appearance -> Layout from the WP dashboard. I messed around with a few but settled on “2 columns, primary on top right, secondary on bottom right” which looks something like this:

The content for each layout is handled by widgets. Again, there are many to choose from and you’ll likely want to play around with the placement and order of the widgets. After you have a few contacts in the system, try moving the widgets around and viewing the results to find the configuration that works best for you.

After the install and setup are completed, you won’t be back to the WordPress dashboard unless you want to tweak more settings. Everything else from this point forward takes place on the front end of the site.

Adding Data:
When you first install RoloPress, it creates a few pages automatically. Two of those are used for data entry; Add Company and Add Contact. When I first viewed the page I instinctively clicked Add Contact. The Add Contact page is really straight forward. It has all the requisite fields you’d expect in a contact management system, including a field marked Company. I’ll come back to that in a second.

I filled in all of the contact information for one of my clients. I clicked the Add Contact button and then headed back to the home page to check out my handy work. Here is what my results looked like:

The form saved my contact just fine, but it also created a record for a new company. The trouble is, the company record was entirely blank. I clicked Edit for the company, updated the information and saved it and everything was fine. This is obviously just a bug and I expect they’ll clean this functionality up in a future version.

One other small bug I found on the Add Contact page also has to do with the company field. I entered 9seeds, LLC as the company name, and when I saved the page, it assumed the comma was a delimiter and it created 2 company records. I removed the two blank company records and decided to try the Add Company page first. I filled in all of the information about the company and saved the entry. I then went back to the Add Contact page to test it out again. In the screenshot below you can see that the form auto-suggested the company name. This worked perfectly and was really simple now that I had the process down.

Finding Contacts:
Once I had a few contacts in the system, I was really curious how well the search functionality was going to work. If you have a ton of data in the system, how good is it if you can’t get to it easily? I have to say that the search functionality in RoloPress is excellent! I tried a bunch of different searches; first name, last name, part of an address, city, on and on and on. Here’s an example of a search I ran for “hen”. It returned 3 results where ‘hen’ was found as part of a street name in the first record and part of the city name in records 2 and 3. You’ll also noticed that it returned 2 contacts and a company record.

In Summary:
From a developer’s standpoint, since RoloPress stores contact data as metadata attached to posts, building add-on functionality that uses that data for things like mass emailing your contact list would be pretty straight forward if you are already comfortable building WordPress plugins that interact with post data. And, if you can’t find a layout that matches your exact needs, taking the existing parts and creating a new template would also be pretty simple.

RoloPress isn’t ready for enterprise level Contact Management, but, if you just need a place to store some contacts, it does a solid job. I’m definitely going to continue using it as it fits my needs perfectly. The small bugs I found have easy workarounds so I don’t see them being any trouble whatsoever.

Filed Under: Reviews, Themes, WordPress Tagged With: , ,