Fine Coffee Cheaper than Beer or Soda

LATaco's interview with Tony Konecny from Tonx.org. I've now had one month worth of Tonx coffee and am a huge supporter and big fan! Try it for free if you don't believe me! http://instagram.com/p/XnBW0pFEgz/

I’d say the biggest misconception about coffee is that it’s expensive. It can feel expensive when you’re standing in a slow line in front of some prohibition-era cosplaying barista and shelling out 5 bucks for a cup – but even with that kind of a price premium, it is still almost a bargain.

For comparison, a pint of craft microbrew at a typical bar will set you back more than a great cappuccino or brewed coffee, even though the margins on that beer are much better and it requires less skill to pull a tap than to pull a decent espresso. But craft beer doesn’t suffer from quite the same perception of being an upscale, pricey luxury and it dodged a lot of unnecessary pretense as it became more mainstream.

When you make your own coffee at home, even the finest coffees become pretty cheap. We are buying and roasting some of the finest coffees available and our per-cup cost for our customers is barely 80 cents a pop. Much cheaper than most sodas, red bull, gas station coffee – and a hell of a lot cheaper than those popular k-cups and nespresso pods.

And we spend a lot of time fighting the misconception that you have to be a trained barista with expensive gear to make a good cup. Not remotely true. It is all about starting with really great, fresh roasted beans.

The Summer Ant Problem

On Monday, I made a trip to H-Mart in search for some Cronuts.  When I arrived, they had sold out and apparently are selling out within an hour of baking.  So instead, I bought a large assortment of pastries from Paris Baguette Cafe and looked forward to a delightful tasting with my wife when she got home from work.  After I put our daughter to bed, I came back downstairs to see that the ants already started the party.  To date, the ants have infested our family room dining table treats and are up 2-0.  I was livid and our for revenge!  The kicker is that I didn't even sample anything from the box as I anticipated a fun dinner. I looked up "ant killer" on Amazon and found Terro.  With just under 600 reviews and 4.5 stars on average, I was ready to buy but I needed something now.  We are subscribers to Amazon Prime, and love it, but it's was still two days away.  I went to the local grocery store and bought some Raid Ant traps.  The reviews on Amazon are sub par and in actuality pretty poor.  I was on a full on war so I ended up buying both.

The Raid solution cost me $8 while the Terro came in under $7.  I ordered the Terro on Amazon on Tuesday and it came next day!!!  Unbelievable service and I am truly impressed more and more by Amazon.  If I would have known, I might have forgone the extra money I spend on the useless Raid trap.

Within seconds, and I mean maybe 10 seconds, the ants were all over the Terro package.  The response was tremendous!  Continually throughout the day, it kept on attracting everybody while the Raid was the lonely child left in the cafeteria.  I'm giving it 5 stars!  Solid five stars!

Terrovsraid

An E-Reader That I Use

I get a lot of questions on what tablet I use / prefer (iPad Mini) and if I still carry an e-reader when I travel.  I do and I'll tell you why. To put it simply, my daughter has taken over my Mini.  Some other quick thoughts are that the Kindle Paperwhite is lighter than the Mini 95 grams, the front light is amazing, the resolution is crisp, and lets not forget about the amazing ecosystem than Amazon has established.

I've never enjoyed reading on the iPad unless it's a news article or a magazine through Flipboard.  I also end up getting distracted by all the applications that are on the iOS ecosystem.  When I want to read a book and dive into it, I'm still in enamored by my Kindle.  In fact, my wife prefers it too!

A Tumbler to Rule Them All

If you travel as much as I do, or find yourself commuting for long periods of time, hang on to your Contigo Travel Mug!  As long as you don't forget yours in the plane, you'll be happy with the Contigo 20oz Travel Mug a.k.a. Best Coffee Tumbler EVER.  It's a pure winner.  It's 100% leak proof and the kicker stats are that the vacuum insulated double wall stainless steel keeps beverages hot for 6 hours and cold for 18 hours! It kept my coffee scalding hot for so long that I had to keep the lid open for over 30 minutes just so I could sip the darn thing!  I highly recommend the 20oz version as it can hold a full can of soda with ice or a vent coffee.  If you're wondering how it tests for cold beverages, I've tested it through and through and was able to reuse the ice for multiple can refills of Mug Root Beer for a couple of hours as it seemed to never melt.

contigo20oz.jpg
contigo20oz.jpg

Ideally, it's a tremendous coffee cup or coffee tumbler.  Just hit up your local drip and filler up!  In case you're wondering, I'm referring to Bird Rock Coffee Roasters!

Update: In 2013, I went through two Contigo Coffee Tumblers and one Zojirushi.  I left them all in airplanes and have only gotten one back to yet leave it in another aircraft.  I just bought another one today, February 1, 2014 and chose to go with Contigo as I wanted to actually be able to drink out of the tumbler within the first hour. The Zojirushi on the other hand, keeps your beverage scalding hot for over 2 hours so it's best for transporting and only enjoying a poured cup of coffee only in my opinion.

SD Memory Cards for my Olympus OM-D 5E

If there is one memory card to get, it's the SanDisk Extreme 16GB 45MB/s SDHC Class 10 card.  It's touted on many other blogs out there and I love my cards.  Personally, I opted for two 32GB cards but I'm leaning towards picking up another pair of 16s due to the speed and time it takes to dump them onto my networked drive.  Right now, both the 16GB and 32GB are around $1.00 a GB on Amazon.  Check them out and always remember to use my links!  Thanks!

My Re-Ply Chair

My Re-Ply chair has arrived and it's newest and youngest fan is my daughter Norah Renée! It's an awesome chair and quite the conversation starter too. Watch the Kickstarter video by it's creator Dan Goldstein. http://instagram.com/p/aMPwKuu4Sh/ http://instagram.com/p/aMO8Hfu4RB/

The Re-Ply Chair from The Re-Ply Chair on Vimeo.

Love it. - Herman Miller

It's No Sunday Phone

We love new phones but hide them in cases. We love nice cars but some of us are so infatuated with them that we only drive them to church (or on special occasions). Both are utilities that are made to be used and I could not agree more.

The iPhone, however, prefers not to play by these rules. Though exquisite in design, it was not born as art to be put on display. It belongs in our pockets. It is a tool. A utility. A gadget of gadgets.

The iPhone is here to work.

via Shawn Blanc

The Magazine

Marco Arment, from Instapaper & tumblr fame, has released a new subscription-based app on iOS simply called,"The Magazine". It's a different approach on technology related articles and their delivery.  I'm already looking forward to the next issue after finishing #1.  I want this to succeed and hopefully I can be insightful enough to be included some day!

Instead of the traditional labor-intensive magazine layout and expensive multimedia production, The Magazine’s article format is similar to Instapaper’s: one clean, adjustable, reader-friendly template with HTML, occasional images, and some small conveniences. It loads quickly, integrates well with sharing and system conventions (including text selection and VoiceOver), occupies minimal storage space, and shows the utmost respect for your time and attention.

The Magazine is leaving behind a lot of what magazines “need”. And many magazines really do need them. But I don’t think this does.

All of this is a bit crazy, and it’s not guaranteed to succeed. But I bet it will.

Looks like my unsubscribed The Daily app is going to have some companionship on my Newsstand.

Kindle Paperwhite is...

When Amazon first debuted the new Kindle Paperwhite, I wasn't so sure about the name. Silly I know, but at $119, there's not too much to complain about except for the lack of audio out for text to speech and the reduced size of available memory (4GB down to 2GB). Nonetheless, even Barnes and Nobles had to lower the price of their lighted black and white e-reader. It's just that good. Not to mention the amazing ecosystem especially their Lending Llibrary available to those that subscribe to Amazon Prime.

When it comes down to it, Amazon at least has the naming scheme down; Kindle Paperwhite vs. Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight. TKO Amazon!

Here are a couple of grabs from reviews posted throughout the blog circuit.

It's the stealth bomber version of the Kindle you know. - Gizmodo

I found myself turning on the light regularly, at various levels of brightness, not just at night. It just makes the Kindle that much more usable and convenient: On a dim subway or in a badly lit room, you can read comfortably. - GigaOM

Joshua Topolsky posted a thorough review on The Verge. Here are a few quotes I came away with.

The device is incredibly comfortable in hand.

It may be the most comfortable e-reader I've ever used.

In my opinion, it's one of the best E Ink displays on the market, and might possibly be the best thanks to that new lighting.

And here's CNN on the Paperwhite:

Kindle Paperwhite is king of e-readers

The one thing I won't be doing on it though is reading comic books. I'm eagerly waiting for mine being delivered this morning and will have an unboxing and review of my own later this week!

Letdown of an iPhone 5 Experience

After guiding a good friend through his iPhone 5 activation, I told him that it would make for a good story. Here is Manoj Osuri's first 48 hours with his iPhone 5. My initial iPhone 5 experience has been less than ideal, to say the least. It's not that I think it's a bad phone…it's actually pretty awesome, now that I've gotten it working. But it was the "getting it working" part that really tainted the experience.

So one of the things I love about iPhones (and my limited experience with Apple products in general) is how quick and easy it normally is to go from opening the box to enjoying the new device without skipping a beat. I pre-ordered phones for my wife and myself. When they arrived over a week earlier than we initially expected, it felt like Christmas came early.

We both turn our phones on, see that it prompts us to sync it with our iTunes, and run straight to our computers. My wife has an HP running Windows 7, and I have an early 2008 MacBook Pro. Within a couple of minutes, my wife has her phone up and running without any problems. I, on the other hand, get a message saying that my phone cannot sync to any iTunes lower than 10.7. I don't think this is more than just a minor annoyance, but when I try to install it, I find out it won't run on my operating system. I do realize that my OS is old (OS X 10.5... I have no idea what animal that corresponds to in Apple's feline nomenclature), but I kept up with all the available updates, and I don't think it's right that I would be forced to buy a new OS in order to use my phone. A big reason why I spent about 4 times as much money on a laptop 4 years ago was because I was put under the impression that my computer would not go obsolete in a few years. I assumed that paying for new operating systems every couple of years would not be involved in keeping my computer relevant. Luckily, since I'm pretty close to being computer illiterate, Elijah was able to help me get OS X 10.6 installed on my computer, but the process took up my entire afternoon and early evening. While all of that was happening, I had my old phone backing itself up on iCloud (which in hindsight is probably something I should have done before). It took nearly as long, but at least I was able to get my phone working that evening. And because the activation of my new phone had technically started, I had no usable phone the whole time.

After going through all of this, I definitely lost most of my excitement over my new iPhone. Getting this phone was not nearly as awesome of an experience as when I got the 3G or the 4. I guess it really left a bad taste in my mouth that, compared to my wife's setup process, I felt like having an Apple computer made things way harder on me than if I had had a PC. And to make things worse, my story still isn't over….

Now this part is definitely not a knock on Apple, but rather a terrible experience with AT&T. That night, my wife and I went to an AT&T store to combine our separate accounts into a family plan. As I expected, I had to change my number since she has a North Carolina number, and I have a Maryland number. Since NC is considered to be in same regional market as Georgia (we live in Atlanta) it made more sense for me to change my number to an Atlanta area code, and have her keep her old number. (Not to mention that she had to deal with enough hassles with changing her name after we got married, so it was my turn to take one for the team!) So after combining our accounts, I started texting my friends and family my new number. I realized something was wrong when every group-text failed to deliver. (Yes, I checked my settings to make sure it was enabled). So having to text all of my contacts my new number individually added to my annoyance with my new phone. The following day, when I left our condo (and our wifi) I saw that my phone would not connect to the internet. I could still call and text (as long as it wasn't a group text), but no internet. At first I thought it was another phone issue, but after investigating a bit further, I start to think that my data plan never got reactivated after getting the new number. That was confirmed when I called AT&T. The person who helped us at the AT&T store the night before somehow missed that step. But in a way, it was a blessing in disguise, because not only did she forget to reactivate my data plan, but she never actually set up our family plan. She just put both of our individual accounts on the same bill. I probably wouldn't have caught that for a while since I use auto-pay, and we would have ended up paying a lot more than we were supposed to. And I'm not 100% sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if having no active data plan was the reason why I couldn't send group-texts. So most of another afternoon was wasted setting up my new iPhone 5.

All that said, I am happy with my new phone... it's pretty awesome. And while I wasn't really expecting to be blown away by it, I did expect to at least have a fun and exciting experience when I got it. And thanks to all the issues I had, the "new iPhone experience" definitely wasn't fun or exciting.

My Favorite LiveBlogs for Apple Events

Over the last few years, many geeks, myself included, become glued to their computers & smartphones following a live blog of the Apple Event. It comes around twice a year, sometimes three and today is the day! The iPhone 5 is set to be announced in just under 15 minutes and here are the two blogs that I love!

Ryan Block for gdgt.com does an amazing job of coverage. He has become synonymous with live journaling and if this was the only feed you could pull, I'd recommend it.

You can also count on Joshua Topolsky from The Verge to do a wonderful job.

I follow these two streams for varying angles and pictures throughout the event. Text wise, they both have their moments of colorful commentary and are fun to follow. Hopefully I'll get to be at one of these events someday!

The Proliferation Of USB 3.0

During the last decade, Apple has led the way in optimizing the personal computer being the first to delete legacy equipment and replace them with new technologies or simply minimalize.  On some occasions, their choice to adopt was either strategically delayed waiting for broad acceptance or in some cases never implemented e.g. Blu-ray.  On the opposite extreme, they have also led the way in the proliferation of FireWire; Apple's own design and technology implemented in 1999 and found in Apple Computers since.

With the inclusion of the latest USB 3.0 ports, we can finally celebrate the new dawn of faster data transfers.  Rumored to also be is a new Dock Connector that I'm guessing will take full advantage of these blazing new bus speeds.  Introduced back in 2008 and the first consumer products released in 2009, it's been a long time coming with Intel releasing their first integrated chipsets earlier this year.  I truly believe that we will look back and thank Apple for this as the adoption rate and proliferation of USB 3.0 peripherals will most likely sky rocket.  This in part being that it costs less than the Thunderbolt equivalent and is backward compatible with USB 2.0.  Consumers love the term "backwards" compatibility.  Where the PC world has failed in the introduction of USB 3.0, Apple will be heralded as the usurpuer.  From those million iOS users stuck syncing for hours, thank you and finally!  Yes, we can say that wireless syncing is where it's at, but only because we don't have access to quick syncs and backups.  The cloud is great nonetheless, but USB 3.0 will be where it's at.

The success of WWDC '12 and not to mention the intro of the MacBook Pro with Retina display, the yet-to-be-announced Fall '12 iPod / iPhone / iPad maybe iMac event couldn't come fast enough.  I love Thunderbolt technology but how many hard drives and peripherals do you see out there support it compared to USB 3.0?