Author Archive
Great Reviews
Posted by: Chip in Fun in Advertising, Marketing & Advertising, Odd, Uncategorized on September 1st, 2009
Three Wolf Moon Tee Shirt
There are more than 1,400 reviews
What to do if an airline breaks your guitar
Posted by: Chip in Entertainment, Marketing & Advertising, Uncategorized, Video on July 9th, 2009
You write a song and upload a video to YouTube.
Learning a New Language
Posted by: Chip in Fun in Advertising on May 21st, 2009
I know a little Spanish, a little French, a few words of Russian and Japanese. As a typical American, I’m pretty good at speaking English. My wife has been taking an Italian class. Although she’s becoming more proficient, she spends a lot of time and effort working on the language.
I thought there must be a way to learn another language without all the time and effort.
The Problem:
The problem with most languages is that Read the rest of this entry »
Tweet Your Electricity Usage
Posted by: Chip in Technology on March 30th, 2009
How much electricity does your computer use? How much does it cost you to run your dishwasher? You can find out with a Kill-a-watt. This is a device you plug in between an appliance and the wall outlet. It will keep track of how much electricity the appliance uses. I’ve been using one for over a year. Now I see on Make that a kit is available from Adafruit Industries that will allow you to modify a Kill-a-watt to tweet your electricity usage to all of your followers.
Hamster Powered Roomba
There are lots of Roomba hacks but this is the first time I’ve seen a hamster powered Roomba.
My Email Management Techniques
Everyone has their own methods of handling email. I have come up with some solutions that have helped me to work more productively.
My computer is a Mac and I use Apple Mail for email, Things for my task manager and iCal for my calendar. All three apps are synced to my iPhone so I always have them available to me.
Unread Mail Smart Folder Settings
In Mail, I created a smart folder that shows only unread emails from all of my accounts. I generally use only this folder when going through mail. I go through the Unread Mail folder knowing that I have to make a decision about each email that I open because after it is read, it will no longer be in the Unread Mail folder that I will look in. There are things I will do with this mail.
- Task that I need to do and will take less than two minutes, I will do it.
- Tasks that I need to do and will take more than two minutes, I send it to Things (this is a topic for another post).
- Appointment that I may need to remember, I send it to iCal
- Junk or mail of no interest, I delete immediately.
- Subscription in which I am no longer interested, I unsubscribe.
- Interesting mail that’s not worthy of keeping for reference, I read and delete.
- Interesting mail that is worth keeping for reference, I read and close. (It will remain in the folder that it was assigned to when it came in and will be easily found with a quick search any time.
I have a folder called Archive where emails that I want to keep are stored. I use rules to automatically file emails from clients, friends, financial institutions, etc. into this folder. These emails still show up in my Unread Mail smart folder.
I would like to hear other methods you may have to handle email. Put them in the comments.
Go Paperless
Posted by: Chip in Gadgets, Software, Technology on February 22nd, 2009
NeatReceipts Mobile Scanner
I’ve been working on creating a paperless office and my NeatReceipts Mobile Scanner and Digital Filing System for Mac
The scanner is small and powered by USB so it doesn’t need a power cable. You put paper in it and press the scan button. It scans, does OCR and saves the file as a PDF. In the software, it decides if the paper is a receipt, a document or a business card. Then, it gathers the information off of the paper and adds it to a database.
It doesn’t do a perfect job putting the right information in the right fields but it’s close enough to get you pretty far along. You can go through the inbox of the program, quickly make any corrections to scans and file them away.
Once the documents are in the computer, the information is searchable. The scanner software saves the documents as standard, universally readable PDFs.
The original paper can go into the shredder.
A Virtual Tropical Vacation Close to Home
Posted by: Chip in Entertainment on February 21st, 2009
A virtual tropical street
We escaped the cold Chicago winter and used less than a gallon of gas.We spent the weekend at Key Lime Cove in Gurnee. Key Lime Cove is a tropical themed resort. We stayed in the Key West Wing. Our 6-year-old son had a great time in the water park and the kid’s activity area. My wife and I enjoyed just forgetting there was snow and freezing temperatures outside.
Most people probably spend most of the time in the water park. We spent about 2.5 hours there. Most of that was time was spent with my son on the lazy river and wave pool but I managed to go down most of the water slides once.
There are shops and a spa. There are also enough restaurants to keep you from having to go out into the cold.
Is that Ernest Hemmingway?
The Water Park
One of the Restaurants
Ted App
Posted by: Chip in Entertainment on February 9th, 2009
If you enjoy TED talks, you can now get a free TED App and view the videos on your iPhone. You can also subscribe to the podcast.
ATMs in Antarctica
In one of my son’s magazines presented an interesting fact… “Did you know there are only two ATMs in Antarctica”.
I found the word “only” interesting because I was surprised to learn that there were ATMs in Antarctica at all.
It turns out that both ATMs are in a store in McMurdo Station Antarctica. The ATMs are from Wells Fargo.
McMurdo has a population of about 200 in the winter and around 2,000 in the summer.
See the current weather conditions for McMurdo.