Zion Radio » Misc

Status Report: Fruit Diet

Rex Pechler — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 18:19:26 +0000

Okay I need to start blogging this somewhere. So it’s a sunny Saturday morning here in Menlo Park. It’s wonderful but I’m feeling lazy because I’m still recovering from the work week: I biked to work two days, played two soccer games, sustained some minor injuries, then didn’t eat enough, or didn’t drink enough water, and did not get enough sleep. Today I’ve had about 5 bananas for breakfast, and I’m about to go for a short (~3 mile) run in a bit, and then have a ton of orange juice (30 oranges) for lunch. And then go for a longer run before it gets dark. And then I’ll eat like 15 bananas. And then maybe a simple low-fat raw vegan salad of some sort after that.

Gourmet Raw at Google

Rex Pechler — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 01:23:59 +0000

So there’s a chef in one of the cafes at Google who makes some relatively fancy raw dishes each night. Check out tonight’s menu:

Running in the Desert

Rex Pechler — Mon, 24 May 2010 18:47:09 +0000

Just got back from Phoenix area, Arizona… where my nephew just graduated from High School. Behind their house, I ran up this hill, and took some pictures:

Email to Dreamhost Support: Funky Email/Subdomain Problem

Rex Pechler — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:58:13 +0000

Just sent this email to Dreamhost support… wonder if they’ll help me with my crazy email problem (not their fault).

(Dreamhost is where I’m hosting this blog, and some other sites)

= Email to Dreamhost =

Hi there,

Background:

Hoping you guys can help me with this.. I used to use a catch-all email address at mail.pechler.com for my own control of spam, etc. But, I’m not using that anymore, since Gmail does such a good job of spam filtering. Anyway, I just realized that any email sent to @mail.pechler.com isn’t coming through to me anymore, and I have some web accounts that will only send the password to a saved @mail.pechler.com address.

Investigation:

Okay so checked what’s up with mail.pechler.com, and I think I had configured that subdomain at another hosting service, and I lost that setup recently when I changed the nameservers to dreamhost’s.

Attempted Solution:

So to fix the problem, I went to create a subdomain in the dreamhost web panel. However, I’m using Gmail for pechler.com, so a mail.pechler.com CNAME and MX record is automatically created by the panel, and I couldn’t find a way to modify the cname.

Here’s what I’d like to do, please let me know if you can help me, and if you think it will work:

- Delete the mail.pechler.com CNAME record (Leave the mail.pechler.com MX record though, for @pechler.com email) (Will this work?)

- Create mail.pechler.com “Google-hosted” subdomain on dreamhost, which will automatically set up mail.mail.pechler.com CNAME/MX records …

- Set up mail.pechler.com as a “Domain alias” at google.com/a/pechler.com (feature that allows you to use same gmail account for @mydomain.com and @sub.mydomain.com addresses)

Think it will work? Can you help me delete the mail.pechler.com CNAME?

Thanks!

Rex

Amazing Vegetable Stew

Rex Pechler — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:15:10 +0000

So I’ve been home sick for the past couple days, and had a craving for nutritious food. Beyond taking vitamins and Echinacea, I figure eating lots of fresh fruit and vegetables is likely the fastest and best way to get healthy.

I wanted to make something that I could grow in the garden. Here’s what I put together:

3 red potatoes, diced
1 red onion, diced
3 large carrots, chopped
1 bunch of celery, chopped
1 can cooked/seasoned tomatoes
1 bunch green onions, chopped
some olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Put onions and olive oil in a pot on the stove. Let brown. Finish chopping the rest of the veggies. Add everything else, and maybe a few cups of water. Let everything simmer for at least an hour.

Serve in a cup or bowl. The fun part was just being able to leave this on the stove and keep eating whenever I want to. And it tastes magical.

Oh, later, I added some roasted pepper and tomato soup from Trader Joe’s, that made it even more tasty.

Now, this is my first time making something from scratch in a long time, so consider the above recipe a rough draft. I look forward to making this after growing my own vegetables in the near future.

Also, I plan to try different combinations of vegetables and herbs and spices. Please let me know if you have any suggestions!

The Best Portable Rechargeable Battery Gadget

Rex Pechler — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:14:36 +0000

I’ve been messing around with AA rechargeable batteries for a while now, and I just discovered what might be the ultimate related gadget: a USB power pack that can charge both ways. This is a multifunction device that has the form factor, and same primary function as those iPod/Cellphone emergency chargers, except these can also recharge the four rechargeable AAAs you put inside. These are already available, and cost about $30. Seems like the perfect mobile accessory to me.. (Charge all my portable devices, plus, if I have a device that needs AAs, I can take these out).

I just ordered this one from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Lenmar-R2G802U-Charger-2150mAh-Batteries/dp/B0010XU4IE/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1253802027&sr=8-2, and I’ll update this post with a review after I get a chance to test it out. I’m looking forward to being able to charge my cellphones on the go, plus my iPod, plus my video camera, plus my everything else!

The Most Powerful Mac Keyboard Shortcuts

Rex Pechler — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 07:03:49 +0000

The Most Powerful Keyboard Shortcuts On Your Mac

Many keyboard shortcuts are frivolous and easy to forget because you can usually do the same thing with your mouse. There are some however, that you should be careful not to press, unless you know what they’ll do…

ctrl+shift+eject: turn of displays (make all screens go dark)
ctrl+option+eject: ?
cmd+option+eject: quick sleep (*not* safe sleep… great for stowing your laptop quickly when you have to move suddenly)
cmd+ctrl+eject: normal restart
cmd+ctrl+power: force restart

Oh, and a couple bonus keyboard shortcuts:
Option + one of the Brightness buttons: Takes you to the Displays pane in System Preferences.
Option + one of the Volume buttons: Takes you to the Sound preference pane.
etc..

Buying Photos from Organized Runs

Rex Pechler — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:17:17 +0000

So I just got another email from sportphoto.com, one of these companies that comes to sporting events, takes pictures of you, and then charges and arm and a leg for a small printed version of it. They’re trying to sell me This upsets me, because I don’t even want it printed… I’d be perfectly happy if they let me download a JPEG for like $10 or less. However, they don’t, so it inspired me to write down an idea…

Okay first, this is sportphoto.com, who took photos at this year’s Bay to Breakers in San Francisco, which I ran together with @ryderramona. And it turns out they do allow you to purchase the files… they _even_ have the option to purchase all the photos they detected of me for $60. Honestly, this isn’t nearly as ridiculous as I thought, still hear me out:

So there are alll these spectators that line the course, many of whom are taking photos of the runners passing by. Multiple people took photos of me, but I’ll probably never see those, although they’re probably just as good and more interesting than the “official” Sport-Photo ones. The solution? A web application of course…

Let’s call it “OpenSportPhoto” …
This site will allow anyone to upload photos from an event. The site will use some pattern recognition software to detect the numbers (bibs) people are wearing, and index them. Participants can later look up their photos by their bib number, or even subscribe beforehand. The site can be promoted by runners during the event, handing out a little flyer or info card to bystanders taking photos, asking them to upload.

The business model is quite simple.. Allow photographers to set a price for their photos, or give them for free and take donations. The site takes a small cut (like 10%). Hey look, we just open sourced a business! (All I ask is that you let me know if you build this!)

Update: So I bought a CD + instant downloads for $55. I was going to post the photos here, but the site says I can’t do that without explicit permission. LAME

Can we make web applications more personal?

Rex Pechler — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 22:40:35 +0000

Most of the stereotypically “Web 2.0″ sites… Digg, Del.icio.us, Flickr, YouTube, etc, are largely focused on the general preferences of the masses… or at least, that’s how the “Popular” content seems to be sorted. I argue that this is a mistake. Instead, these web applications should focus more on trends within our own social group.

I’ll focus on just one example… YouTube. YouTube has some serious challenges. One of the most apparent is comments. For every video that hits the front page, you can expect hundreds of immature and often offensive messages. My solution would be to split up the comments into categories / tabs… “Friends”, “Top”, “All”, … where the default “Friends” tab would show any comments that any of your Gmail/gTalk friends left on that video. Also, you could leave comments publicly, or only for your friends to see.

If we start building websites like this, the web will be a much more personal experience, and welcoming to newcomers. Thanks for listening.

Flixster Could Be Better

Rex Pechler — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:17:10 +0000

Ugh. Flixster is so annoying… all the advertisements and silly activities, it is reminiscent for pre-dot-com-bust era websites – in a bad way. And it kinda looks like MySpace. Normally, I’d like to think I wouldn’t rant here about a website I dislike like this, but in this case it’s not so simple. You see, Flixster could be so much better, and I need it to be. Case in point:

I want to keep track of my film watching habits. I want to log the movies I see, for personal reference and for sharing… this could include public or private notes about the films.

I want to keep a list of movies that I want to see. This can be public, and I could see which friends want to see the same movie and then we could watch together.

I want to keep a list of the movies I own… so that my friends can see what they can borrow from me. The site should also let me track who I’m lending my discs to.

I want to know what my friends think about movies… so aggregating their notes onto the movie’s page.

Sadly, Flixster probably won’t be able to become awesome like this unless someone were to buy it… whoever’s in charge seems to be pretty clueless about what they’re doing. So, someone, please steal the ideas listed above and give them some competition.

Oh and here’s my Flixster profile, lol.