Thoughtless Banter – John Bellone

Life

Apr

Kitchen Mishaps

Posted by JB at 11:19 am

I was browsing my Google Reader news feed this morning and came across article that was available up on the Life Hacker blog. For those of you that do not subscribe to the hacker mentality, this blog is up and available for those of us looking to learn the shortcuts in life, and tinker a little bit with our daily routine to optimize the hell out of it.

The Stupid Things You Do in the Kitchen (and How to Fix Them) is a neat article which explains some of the top things that amateur chefs, and even those of us just looking to make some tasty morsels, tend to make without realizing it. I know that I’ve made at least a few of these (and continue to on occasion) mistakes in the past. If you’re interested in raising your cooking skill up a notch then this is a must read.

Jan

Keeping On Top Of It

Posted by JB at 4:52 am

Many of us “formally trained” developers tend to put an engineering mindset to many of the problems in our life, and this is exactly what I did when I took a look back on my own personal productivity issues. I was beginning to notice that much of my day was filled with distractions. Many of them are valid, but a good chunk of them could be managed much, much better. If you’re productivity is anything like mine it comes in spurts: the beginning of the day you’re cruising with two or three cups of coffee in you, and about an hour before lunchtime everything starts to slow down only to pick up at around 3:45pm. For the next two and a half hours you actually get some work done.

I’ve always had a problem with distractions during work. Many people tend to have the problem where they’ll answer personal e-mails, cruise around on Facebook, or tap away on their phone. I do all of that, but it never became a problem where I had reassess my strategy of getting shit done at work. I am a news junkie. And just like any other junkie, my habit can become compulsive and often lead to me wasting a lot of time on lurking. When you give them a medium that literally includes live news feeds from all around the world, well, I make a habit of spending my time reading. Reading. And reading. It could be about sports, politics, jubilation, world turmoil or even the fall (and eventual rise) of orange juice options.

At the time of this writing it is roughly four thirty in the morning and I am cruising news websites because I can’t sleep. But during the hours of work this can absolutely become a problem. One of the ways that I have been able to manage it is by spending a good chunk of time in the morning (and evening) on the bus ride reading news digitally. This gives me my fix for the day and doesn’t affect work productivity. Being of the engineering mindset I’m always looking for that optimum solution for being productive at work. How do you manage your action items? Do you plan your day out on paper, use colored post-it notes based on priority, an old fashioned to-do list, or are you the type of person that doesn’t need a mechanism to get shit done?

For me I’d definitely be in favor of software that allowed me to track to-do items across multiple environments (Windows, iPad, Android, Mac) and have found that Google’s Task API gives me the ability to do this seamlessly. But I haven’t yet found a proper front-end that is clean and intuitive to use. On the Mac side the Things software has been around for awhile, but charges for the application usage on multiple platforms. They seem to have solved the issue elegantly, but I am also looking for integration with my Google services which doesn’t seem to be there yet. And I also have that pesky Windows and Android to think about. Not to mention it is just damn expensive.

Maybe the answer is that there isn’t anything yet that’ll let me organize my priorities digitally, but I have a hard time believing that. What are your experiences?

Jan

New Year Goals

Posted by JB at 3:48 pm

New Year's Resolutions

The past couple of years I’ve been doing this whole near year’s resolution thing. I don’t necessarily agree with it in principle, because the fact of the matter is that most people (including myself) do not stick with their goals throughout the year. There are often life changes that impact the feasibility of them, and sometimes the goals themselves are life changes that are not possible. The majority of my goals this year are redundant, but to continue with tradition and be able to look back on them next year will be nice. So, here we go:

Travel to Europe at some point during the year. Possibly California and Washington state.

This was a goal last year that I wasn’t able to achieve. There was a loose plan to travel with a friend through Europe, but we were unable to get our schedules together. This upcoming year I already have plans to see Germany in September, and possibly London in February, although both aren’t booked yet. I modified this from last year as I want to go to Europe, and I don’t consider Mexico or Canada abroad. Last year I made several trips to Boston, went to Virginia to see a friend, upstate New York, and took a week long trip to Indiana. In addition to going to Europe I would like to see the west coast, but we’ll see about that one.

Make the decision to go to graduate school, and take the GRE.

It has always been “in the plan” to go to graduate school, but I’m still up in the air if I want to go for something that is in the field of software engineering, for literature or possibly even a business administration degree. I am leaning towards going back to school for an MBA as it seems more aligned with my long term goals, and I can always go back to get the others later if I am bored.

Keep eating healthy, be more active, and ride the bicycle more.

Last year I was able to achieve part of this goal and I lost a little over forty pounds just by changing my eating habits. Since I enjoy cooking I want to learn more about nutrition, eating healthy, and how to cook up some meals quickly at the end of the day. The activity part is where I need to focus on since I’ve done the diet pretty well. I was in a softball league in the spring of last year, rode the bicycle a little in the spring months, and did some hiking. I am considering martial arts if I am able to find something that jives with my schedule. I was able to do this all last year without going to a gym, and I’d like to continue on the same path.

Write more words, play more video games and enjoy life.

I would say that this was mostly a success. I started posting on this blog for a semi-regular basis, and at one point started drafting notes for a science fiction novel I’ve been itching to write for nigh on a decade now. The past couple of months I’ve been playing Battlefield 3 with some old friends, and the same ones are trying to get me to sell my soul and play some Star Wars: Old Republic, but I am pushing back.

Learn the guitar well enough to jam out with some friends.

Over the Thanksgiving break I went down to see a friend in Virginia, and we both picked up Rocksmith for a song. I started learning the guitar by playing this video game, and found out that my MacBook makes a really great amplifier with GarageBand. I’ve always wanted to get back into music, and my goal is to get decent enough so that I am able to have some fun with friends that jam often.

I figured since I am already working on these goals it makes sense to include them so I can show some progress this time next year. Because life changes very often I don’t see a point to include something that is out of reach, or will require a huge dedication of time that I am not certain I can allocate. Next year, as long as the apocalypse doesn’t happen, I am hoping to be able to continue the tradition and add some more goals (as well as check some off).

Nov

Learning to Rock: Video Game Style

Posted by JB at 11:30 am

When I was younger I spent a year or so not-so-admirably trying to learn how to play the saxophone. Like many people at that ripe age there were many other things on our mind: playing with friends outside, video games, and basically anything other than the prescribed homework-esque music. I can’t remember actually ever understanding music, like most things in my life I think I probably guessed and slid through the class, but for some time I have always wanted to learn how to play music. I don’t want to study music, in fact, I hate looking at it. It hurts my brain much in the same way that mathematics does, but that does not mean that I lack respect for music (and mathematics, for that matter).

When I first touched Guitar Hero I thought it was very fun. My roommate and I spent hours upon hours staying up, not doing our class work, and battling each other with the game rifts. But it wasn’t like playing a real guitar. I’ve strummed my digits, fumbled with the frets, but was never able to spend the time to actually learn how to play. This is where Rocksmith enters the picture.

My axe.

This past Thanksgiving I drove down to Virgina to spend it with an old friend. We headed out that night and checked out Best Buy in hopes to figure out if we wanted to spend our hard earned money on some Black Friday swag when we first ran across Rocksmith. If that store in Reston, VA wasn’t able to find an Xbox 360 controller I probably wouldn’t have taken the red pill. My buddy, Drew, has been a guitar player for years and he was quite impressed with the game. Rocksmith is what Guitar Hero should have been. You plug in your guitar to the console, and strum along to the song with the actual notes, thereby learning how to play the song on the guitar. It is genius. Futhermore, Rocksmith includes video tutorials, a digital amp, and downloadable content to keep you rocking along for perpetually.

The game tracks your progress and will dynamically make the songs harder when your skill level increases (or easier when it decreases). This means that you will always be challenged, but not enough to get discouraged and put the instrument down when you can’t feel that you accomplished something. Additional game modes allow you to master individual verses of the song, replay them at a slower speed, and even rock out to a friend that has purchased the game. Unfortunately, as far as we were able to tell, it does not include Xbox 360 (or Playstation Network) support for multiplayer, so your buddy has to actually come over to jam.

I’ve only been playing the game for a few days but I already know much, much more about playing the guitar than a did a few days ago. The obvious initial cost is a bit more steep than your normal video game if you don’t own a guitar, but there are two avenues you can go: the bundle that includes a guitar (PS3) [~$200]; just the game if you already have your axe (PS3).

Since Drew and I stumbled upon an awesome Gamestop sale on the game, we were able to get it for about $25 dollars off the retail price, which allowed me to save about $40 off the price of the bundle when I went to Guitar Center to buy the instrument. But obviously if you already have a guitar, or are able to purchase one second hand, it would still be cheaper just to get the game in the box. It should work with any six string guitar, and future downloadable content to the game promise a setting for bass rifts. This was my late birthday present to myself, and I’ve been enjoying it for a few days now. I hope you’re able to enjoy it, too!

Nov

Furniture For Men

Posted by JB at 12:57 pm

A few months ago I got an apartment on my own, without a roommate, and found myself in quite a pickle: the only furniture that I owned as a living room coffee set, a few chairs that I acquired from the Zinkk Inc office, and some randomly assorted Ikea pieces. After putting out my desperate (not really) call to family (and friends) I started to search around for some local bargins because let’s face it, why the fuck was I going to spend a lot of money on things to sit on in an apartment that I am barely at?

Table Design

I did a little searching on Etsy and found there were a couple of desks that I fancied, some badgering and trips to the local hardware store later I had a plan for a desk. I consider myself a very minimalistic person when it comes to furniture, sure it needs to look good, but ultimately all I care about is that it gets the fucking job done.

The choice was to build it with three eight food pieces of pine, and stain it to match as closely as possible to my living room set, since the desk would be at the center of the situation going on up in there. The legs were built from steel piping which was linked together with various elbows, unions, and fasteners, after being sanded down and painted with some rustoleum. Three two-inch holes were cut into the back of the desk to throw down some computer wires to allow the table to be flush up against the wall. A cross bar the length of the table would be used for stability.

Top of the table without the holes or the legs.

After the success of the table I started to get drunk with power, and began dreaming up various shelving units, platform beds, that can be relatively easily be made with wood, steel piping, and a little bit of elbow grease. But before filling out an application for the Home Depot contracter’s credit card there was something else that I wanted to try to get done with the scrap I had lying around.

Traffic Light Lamp

A little over a year ago I sniped an auction on eBay and procured a traffic light for relatively cheap. At one point I was going to hack it with an ardunio unit, but after moving once or twice I thought it would be a lot better to turn this bad boy into a lamp. The only problem is that it weighs quite a considerable amount, and the stand itself would have to be quite beefy. While thinking out the table design the lamp stand was a natural second choice for the next project.

The planning stages are still underway, but I figured it would be approached in the same fashion: going to the hardware store, looking for some cool shit to throw together, and beginning the sanding, painting and piping. The only difficultly here is obviously the whole electricity thing, but I am pretty sure that I got that covered.

Call to Arms: Bean Bag Chair

Next up something to plop my fat ass down onto and watch Netflix, play some video games, and pound away at the keyboard on. A good buddy of mine suggested buying a LoveSac SuperSac which is essentially a memory foam bean bag chair. That’s right, a 100 pound, 6 foot wide, bean bag chair. It is damn comfortable. As you can tell, my choice of a chair caused a lot of commotion on that website called Facebook.

The chair is micro-leather, which really means fake fucking leather that they can sell at a premium but is much easier to clean, and came packed into several different packages. You literally had to tear open the packaging, toss around the memory foam, and stuff the casing with this burlap sack full of lumpy foam. It was a huge pain in the ass, but in the end proved to be an perfect addition to the man-cave.

My chair at the apartment before I had the table fully set up for equipment.

It definitely pays to have a little creativity (and a father with a garage full of power tools) and an open mind when you are looking at furnishing an apartment. This type of furniture probably does not suit everyone, but I have a particular taste which I think is highlighted quite well with the steel piping and stained wood finish. If the lamp goes as well as I hope my future projects will likely include a shelving unit for the kitchen to extend my “pantry,” and I’ve already started looking at new ways to improve on the design of table (union screw locks, larger lengths of pipe). If anyone is interested I’m available for hire provided you have some beer and food.

The (nearly) finished product with all the computer equipment.

Jul

Monster Modifications

Posted by JB at 4:07 pm

After riding the motorcycle for a few miles I quickly realized there were a few things that needed to be changed on this bike to make it my own. The immediate changes were definitely the mirrors: I was having problems seeing traffic behind me on the freeway. The choice was simple in this department as I needed something that went on the ends of the handle bars. The only other functional change that I saw in the immediate future was the windscreen. The stock fairing was really pushing the naked sport bike feel and offers little to no protection at freeway speeds. One last change was more of an aesthetic one. The first that I actually knew I was removing from the bike was the rear tail fender. It is absolutely horrible.

Puig windscreen for Ducati 796

After browsing the Ducati Monster Forum for some ideas for bike modifications I came across a post that referenced the Puig racing windscreen brand, and poked around Monster Parts to see what they had available. I settled on a smoked windscreen that doesn’t require any additional mounting brackets (it attaches to the frame). This gives me the flexibility to swap it out for the stock fairing if necessary. One thing that I noticed with this windscreen is that because the head light does not have any type of screen the light shines (and reflects) which is especially noticeable at night. Other than that, I am pleased with the amount of air that gets pushed out of the way on the freeway when at speed, an absolute improvement over the stock fairing.

CRG Arrow mirrors

After taking my first ride up the Garden State Parkway to Red Bank to see the Zinkk crew I noticed that these mirrors were not going to cut it. Even when the riding position lowered (bent down on the tank) it was difficult to see past my shoulders, and while perusing Monster Parts I found the CRG arrow bar end mirrors which looked pretty slick on the stock photography. After installation they proved to be completely adjustable for splitting, if necessary.

Evotec Tail Chop for Ducati 796

The stock rear fender (tail) is disgustingly long and looks completely out of place on this type of motorcycle. Because this actual modification is performed by damn near every Monster owner there are several step-by-step instructions for the installation of the tail chop kit, and I decided on what looked to be the best engineered the Evotec tail chop kit for the Monster series. Unfortunately the instructions are rather sparse, but thanks to the forum there were photo and video instructions to get this piece in smoothly as it requires remounting of the seat lock, turn indicators and rear light.

I think this is going to be all the changes that I have in mind for now. There is one more that I am considering, mainly because I already housed the right turn indicator with my leg, but an integrated tail light must at least look nice and fit on the Evotec kit. I’m going to research this a little more. Later down the road: tank bag, GPS mount, and video camera mount. For now, its time to ride!

Jun

A Duc In The House

Posted by JB at 10:17 pm

For the past few years I have been contemplating getting my motorcycle endorsement on my driver’s license. After talking with a few friends of mine, doing some research online, and a little more research in person, I decided that I knew what I wanted to purchase for my first motorcycle. The last time that I rode anything with two wheels that was not powered by my own legs was quite some time ago and it wasn’t exactly what you’d call good practice for riding a motorbike. Because of this, and several people insisting that I should take the basic rider’s course, I signed up to a riding academy a few minutes from my apartment in Jersey City. A few days after that I bought my Monster.

A friend suggested that I take a look at both the Triumph, and the Ducati brands. After some researching online I was pretty much sold on the Ducati Monster – the bike looked awesome, great reviews, and the price was right – so I went at the beginning of May to Cross Country Ducati in Metuchen to take a look at their Monster selection. After a little prodding, and some luck, I settled on a red Monster 796 (803cc) with Anti-lock brakes. About a week later the bike was delivered to my parent’s house, and I went for some riding in the high school parking lot.

I did the right thing by taking the basic rider’s course, even though it was on Memorial Day weekend, a little over ninety degrees outside, and in Paterson. I was able to pass the examination and earn a waiver for my motorcycle endorsement, and on Tuesday I rode up to the DMV (twice!) and had it added to my driver’s license. Before I left to head back up to North Jersey for work on Tuesday evening I took the bike out for a solo spin around town: I went up Nugentown road, Green street, Railroad avenue, Forge road, and all the way up Route 539 to the intersection of Route 72 (and back). Not too shabby. If all goes well I am planning on spending a lot of time riding this summer getting used to the Ducati, especially during the Gettysburg bike week at the beginning of July. So if you see me somewhere around make sure to give a thumbs up!

I also was able to get a telephoto lens relatively cheap for the digital SLR, and I plan to take some awesome photos of not only the bike, but where the bike takes me this summer. The ones that you see above were taken with the original, stock lens that came with the Rebel XTi. I am hoping to find a affordable wide angle lens for some more artistic shots.