How often have you been doing a repetitive task and thought, “A robot could do this”? Now imagine what would actually happen if you tried to build that robot. It probably wouldn’t work very well and it might be hilarious. That pretty accurately describe’s Simone’s Robots on YouTube. Go check out her channel and watch her build a robot to apply lipstick, chop vegetables, or slap her as an alarm clock. She’s got a good sense of humor and the videos are reasonable crisp and short. They’re good for a couple chuckles.
Mike Rowe’s Podcast
Mike Rowe is one of my favorite people to follow on Facebook. He has such a refreshingly normal view on life (or at least one that aligns with mine) and he is great with words. I was thrilled to hear that he has started a new podcast. He says it’s an homage to Paul Harvey and I can definitely see the similarities. Each episode is short (~5-6 minutes) and tells a great story. I don’t want to ruin it for you because it’s so much better to hear it in his own words. But do me a favor and go to https://mikerowe.com/podcast/ and listen to episode 5. If you don’t get hooked after those 5 minutes, then I give up. It’s an incredible story.
Conflicting Opinions
In a recent post, I mentioned the Smarter Every Day interview with the President. Destin, the guy behind Smarter Every Day, has posted another video talking about the whole experience. Why was he picked? How did disagreeing on some political issues effect the conversation?
Around the 3:42 mark, Destin goes into some really interesting thoughts about how polarized our political environment is. He compares it to feedback loops. There are positive feedback loops and negative feedback loops. If a system has both inputs, it will trend toward the norm. But if you remove one, you are going to wildly diverge. This is what happens with politics if we only listen to news/media/journalists who agree with us. You’re not getting both sides so you end up very polarized one way or the other. Destin points out that it’s our responsibility to really be informed about the issues and understand the other side of the argument.
If you were at all intrigued by my previous post, watch this video. He says it better than I did with some cool graphics and stats to back it up.
The Asocial Network
This FoxTrot comic pretty accurately describes my website.
Pallets
Pallets are everywhere, but did you ever think about where they come from or where they are going? They represent big money, big business and big lawsuits. Cabinet Magazine has a pretty good article about it.
Thanks to the “Timber” episode of the Stuff You Should Know Podcast for pointing me to that article.
Stuff You Should Know
If you listen to podcasts, check out the Stuff You Should Know podcast. (If you don’t listen to podcasts, this is a great one to start with). The hosts, Chuck and Josh, take hour-long deep dives into literally hundreds of different topics. Here are some of their recent subjects: caffeine, Isaac Newton, Satanic Panic of the 1980s, the Great Wall of China and maggots. Each episode is full of great facts and plenty of comedic relief.
They have built up 500+ episodes of the podcast so you can listen for a LONG time before you run out of fresh content. Plus they are still publishing two podcasts per week.
Woodinville Christmas Lights
For quite a while, I’ve been hearing people talk about a home on the east side of town that has an incredible lighting display. It’s just a guy who decided he wanted a light display and it kind of got out of hand.
We finally went over this year to check it out and wow, it did not disappoint. There are just under 125,000 lights, 3.5 miles of extension cords, 13 miles of wiring and a computer to control it all in sync with the music. You can see it all at their website: http://www.woodinvillewonderland.com
It’s worth the trip if you have some time next year.
Printing Tiled Images
I’m working on a new decorative sign for our house. After I had drawn it at full size in Photoshop Elements, I needed to print it full-size, tiled across multiple sheets of paper. It seems like there are a lot of ways to do this, but it took me long enough to figure out that I figured I should write it down.
My approach was to save it as a PDF from Photoshop Elements and then open that PDF in Fox It Reader. (I think Adobe Reader has a similar feature.) There’s an option when printing to print it as a tiled image. You should get some extra marks on the paper to help you line up the multiple sheets and tape them together. One easy way to accomplish that is to hold it up to a window when it’s light outside and then you can easily align the sheets.
If you do this regularly, you might want to check out Big Print. It costs $22 but check out the videos and you’ll quickly see why it’s probably worth the investment. On a side note, if you have an engineering mind and you enjoy woodworking, check out the rest of that guy’s site and his YouTube video. He makes incredibly complex tools and projects out of wood.
Name Check
If you’re thinking about starting a business or any kind of website, one of the hardest parts is coming up with a name. It’s not just coming up with an idea, it’s coming up with an idea that has an available domain name, Instagram name, Facebook name, etc.
There are a bunch of websites out there to help with this, but one of my favorites is https://namechk.com/. You just type in the name you are interested in using and it checks across a whole bunch of services at the same time to tell you where it’s available.
Amazon Price Watches
If you’re stalking some items on Amazon, watching for a good price, check out camelcamelcamel.com. They will alert you if the price drops below a threshold that you set and it will also show you a price history chart. It’s interesting how much prices fluctuate! It’s also fun to scroll through their Top Price Drops page to see what items they are discounting the most today.
Even if you aren’t waiting for a product to hit a specific price point, it’s nice to check that site and make sure you aren’t buying it at a temporary price peak. It’s also handy to combine this with Amazon’s price reduction policy. It changes regularly, but right now it seems to be good for seven days. There’s some minimum price change is required too, but as an example, I watched a product drop $20 and seven days later, I called back and got a refund. I had to mention the policy to get the refund though. At first the rep told me to ship it back and then buy it again.