Month: January 2011

Boston’s Bike Sharing Myth, And China

Posted on by in Boston/Cambridge

Bike sharing programs have been popping up in major cities all over the world throughout the past few years, and for good reason. When thoughtfully designed, they’re really a brilliant idea. For those who are unfamiliar, these programs establish bike stations in dozens of locations throughout a city allowing city residents and visitors to rent a bike using a credit card or membership pass from a automated machine. Once rented, a bike is unlocked from the station, and the user is free to ride the bike anywhere in the city, and then return it to any other station. There’s no worrying about locking the bike up, or bringing it back to the initial rental location – it’s really a carefree,

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Homebrewing Crash Course: Bottling Beer

Posted on by in Beer, Homebrew Crash Course

The following crash course is a simple walkthrough of the homebrew bottling process. It’s not intended to be a comprehensive guide, and is written for those who want to learn as they go, or need a quick refresher. It’s based on my own experience, and if you find any errors or have any suggestions to improve the guide, please pass them along. Over the coming months, I plan to create additional guides covering extract brewing, all-grain brewing, the racking process, sanitation, and recipe creation. And of course I’ll update this one as I receive suggestions or think of ways it can be improved. Hope you enjoy. Estimated Time: The bottling process generally takes about an hour and fifteen minutes. After

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Slim Pig

Posted on by in Cartoons

My good friend, James Spector, used to be a child actor. He had lots of minor roles that collectively add up to a fairly impressive, and even more humorous, portfolio. In my opinion, some of his best work was when he was the voice for Slim Pig, the main character of a children’s cartoon show about a two dimensional pig living in a three dimensional world. This was really cutting edge stuff for 1996. James completed the entire first season, and then inconveniently went through puberty before the second season could be recorded. He was replaced by a middle-aged woman. The show seems to be making a comeback in Australia and Europe, and was just re-released on DVD. Unfortunately, James doesn’t have the

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TED X Beats

Posted on by in Links, Music

Someone with far too much free time has remixed a bunch to TED talks to some beats. This one’s my favorite: The rest of them are here. Somewhat related, I stumbled upon this pretty good Dan Ariley talk earlier today: His book, Predictably Irrational, was a quick, interesting read too.

Where Good Ideas Come From

Posted on by in Books

I read a great book about the history of innovation and invention on my flight back from Cambodia. It’s called Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, and it’s by Steven Johnson. The book is a synthesis of historical innovative thinking, covering a broad array of topics ranging from theories such as natural selection, to the gradual development of technologies such as GPS. Johnson dispels the common myth that most innovations are thought up behind closed doors by brilliant people who are ahead of their times, and goes to great lengths to demonstrate that the majority of useful ideas throughout history were developed very slowly, building incrementally off of existing ideas, often in collaboration with large groups of

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