Now I never wanted one until recently, when I installed both Paper and Draw Something on my iPad. Since then, I’ve bought 2 different stylus brands to compare.

First, I got the “3 pcs Aqua Blue/Black/Red Capacitive Stylus/styli Touch Screen Cellphone Tablet Pen…” from Amazon.com for $2.45 shipping included.  The black one is pictured below.

These $1 styluses (styli?) are lightweight, have rubbery and squishy tips, a clip, and they will also stick to your iPad Smart Cover magnets. I like these for the price mostly, and they could be improved with a little more length and weight, but most of all I found myself wanting a slightly more rigid tip.

I then got the Alupen by Just|Mobile, which is between about $18-25 at Amazon and comes in several colors. It has a hefty, chunky design (like a kindergarten pencil) and is very easy to write with.  It does have a more rigid tip I want and it feels less “squishy.”  The Alupen has a very nice weight and it comes with a leather slipcase.

Ultimately, the two don’t write different on the iPad screen, but they certainly feel different in your hand. The Alupen is definitely the best of the two, even though it’s about 20 times the cost.

EDIT: The rubber tip of my AluPen got a small crack/tear in it after 3 weeks of regular use.  I’ve sent it back to the company for warranty replacement.

I’ve decided that selling my book Simple Cocktails at Home through Lulu.com was too convoluted. I am now selling the digital (PDF) edition on my own, without any digital rights management, for $1 each. This puts them at a really convenient price, and you can buy multiple copies for yourself and give them away to friends. I will just email you the PDF for the book when you buy it, simple as that.

I want to exclude any other parties from the purchase process so that you can have unrestricted access to the book that doesn’t expire or require passwords or anything. You have permission use each copy on all your devices, like your iPhones, iPads, or computers. Just don’t steal it by sharing it with people who haven’t paid for it. I worked pretty hard to assemble and tweak the right recipes and the right drinks.

Simple Cocktails at Home contains simple cocktail recipes in 2 sections: a shopping list for the first 10 drinks, then an additional shopping list for the second 10 drinks. It was designed for people who want a small home bar without breaking the bank, and answers the question, “how do I get started making some cocktails for friends?” The PDF is 29 pages and looks great on the iPhone (no zooming required!) or iPad. Thanks to all of you who buy it in advance. Click below to buy.

How many copies would you like?

1 copy $1.00 USD 2 copies $2.00 USD 3 copies $3.00 USD 4 copies $4.00 USD 5 copies $5.00 USD 10 copies $10.00 USD 20 copies $20.00 USD 50 copies $50.00 USD

 

The most prevalent problem I’ve had in recent years is a constant lack of hard drive space for my music library.  I have a 75 gb library and I feel like I’m always running out of space.  iTunes Match, released in November from Apple, has finally helped me alleviate this.

The idea is this: Apple has a bunch of music on it’s servers and we have a bunch of music on our computers.  A lot of that music matches.  So there’s no reason to have to upload all of our music to Apple when they have it already.  iTunes Match scans your library, matches all it can, and uploads the rest.  You can then choose to remove the physical files from your computer, remove the ones you rarely listen to, etc.  You can re-download or stream it whenever you want from your computer, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, or Apple TV.  iTunes Match is $25 a year.  Click this link for more info on Wikipedia.

I have 15,928 songs in my iTunes library, all cleanly labeled, all with album art.  Most of what I have you can buy on iTunes, I have almost zero bootleg or rare stuff.   Match recognized 11,000 songs and matched them, and had to upload the remaining 4,000-5,000.  I was concerned about how long the “matching” and “uploading” would take, since Google Music ran on my computer for like a week and only uploaded about 1/4 of my library.  The answer is: about 17 hours.  I started the process at work where internet is atrociously slow at about 1pm.  I closed my laptop for my 1-hour commute home around 4pm, then plugged it in and started it again at about 5 and let it run all night.  I had to leave for work again at 6am, so I closed it again, but it was almost done.  It took about 2 hours to finish once I got back to work.  So really, one night and it was done.  Match was very smart about picking up where it left off, too.

Now, how does this change iTunes for me?  Well, there’s little clouds next to all my music on my computer, except for about 20-30 that iTunes actually couldn’t find the files for (probably deleted long ago).  I can now listen to my whole library on my older MacBook Pro with no downloading at all, no hard drive space lost!  I can also download music from the cloud to my iPhone as I want, then delete it if I need more space, then download it again if I want to.  Here’s some images – the clouds represent music that’s not on my iPhone, but I can download:

In the second image, note you can “Download All,” and in the third you can see that it is possible to download from iTunes Match over 3G, but it’s turned of by default.

So far, Match works great for me.  It takes about as long to download song to my iPhone over wifi as it would to purchase and download them outright from iTunes.  The option to stream the music is reserved for the computer-based iTunes and the Apple TV, though  You’re required to download songs in order to play them on the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

I’m open to questions, so ask away!  I know I had lots before I signed up, but I’m really happy that I did.

These range in price from $0.86 to $1.44 apiece, so I just got all three. The total was $5.04 with 3-5 day shipping.

Each of these have their pros and cons. From left to right, they are: the Air Case, the TPU Case, and the Polycarbonate Case. The Air Case offers minor protection and snaps onto the back of the phone and protects the sides too. This case adds the least amount of extra size and is also the only one without the Monoprice logo on the back. The TPU case is less rigid, flexible material and has a cool quilted pattern on the back. I’m a bit concerned the softer material will become discolored (yellowish) with time. Lastly, the Polycarbonate Case offers the most protection (it’s the only 2-piece case, front and back), but comes too close to the screen sides for me, making it particularly hard to drag icons from one screen to another.

Ultimately, I want to make sure everyone’s aware that there are other (better?) options than the $30 cases you find at your local Apple store.

My Dear Children,

I thought it was important to tell you how one song changed my life.

I was in high school from August 1990 to May of 1994.  My Freshman year was hard because there are some terrible social pressures on you when you’re 13 years old.  I was certainly not cool by any stretch of the word, and usually spent my free time hiding in the library avoiding people.  Maybe you have noticed I still do that from time to time when I’m uncomfortable – thank God I have your mom to help me when I fail socially.

When I started my Sophomore year of high school, it looked like I would have a similar, lonely year.  A few weeks after school started, when I was 14 years old, something changed me: “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana.

You see, I’ve always loved music but it was misdirected.  The first album I got was Can’t Slow Down by Lionel Richie.  In high school, I was listening to stuff like Poison, Guns n Roses, INXS, or White Lion.  I liked music with guitars, stuff that was listenable and “edgy.”

As I listened to Nivana’s Nevermind album, though, music became a passionate affair for me, and no longer a passive relationship.  I got the edge I wanted, but now I loved music – I started to seek stuff that spoke to me. I was learning how to play drums at the time, and so I played Nirvana songs.  I made friends at school who also liked Nirvana.  We got their first album Bleach and loved that too.  We played music together.  My parents – God bless em – let us practice in their garage.  We played a few shows throughout the remainder of high school.

Do you see how this wasn’t just about Nirvana anymore?  I began to play music with others.  I made good friends.  I had fun and I became a music critic – not professionally, of course, but I am aware of the massive impact music can have on a life, so I love music, I argue about music, I complain about music, I am fickle about the music that I do and don’t like.  It’s really important to me.

For some people, music is entertainment, but for me it’s passion, it’s definition, and it’s essential.  Music is something serious and music is something fun at the same time.  There are choices that musicians make and choices we make as listeners that are really important – these things can either drive or mute our passions.  “Smells Like Teen Spirit” began my path of pursuing passion.

Nevermind was released 20 years ago.  The moral of my story is not “I wasn’t cool and I became cool because I liked cool music.”  Here’s what I want you to learn from this: something small, like one song, can change everything.  The message is not to find the song that changes you, but I want you to be that song that changes people’s lives.  Live passionately.

Love, Dad.

Try this fun combination: crushed graham crackers, Trader Joe’s pumpkin ice cream, Trader Joe’s caramel sauce, some whipped cream and a few peanuts.  I’ve eaten it 3 days in a row and it hasn’t gotten old yet.

I have lots of reading to do lately, and I needed something to make that easier, cheaper, and something I could use on my one-hour commute, too.  Here’s why I like the Kindle, and why the cheapest version (ad-supported wifi) is a good pick for me:

• The ads on the screensaver are very unobtrusive, look nice, and have great deals on a very regular basis.
• If you’re a regular Amazon shopper, the special offers are great.  The first one I used was “$5 off any purchase that’s $10 or more.”  Recently, there was a “save 40% on a Kindle cover.”  I’d say about 3/4 of the special offers are for Amazon products.
• The special offers are only available to the people with Special Offer Kindles, which means, you could pay $25-50 more for a non-ad Kindle, and get none of the deals as a result.

Now the last big thing is that a lot of the books I’m reading are text-to-speech enabled, so I can listen to them in the car without having to pay more to get an “audiobook” version.  It works really well too, the voice options include male or female with 3 reading speeds each.  I’ve gone through book in the car and while it’s not as classy as an actor-read audiobook, it’s functional and a good option to have.

Because I have a strange interest in soda trends, I recently became privy to a new Pepsi that’s about to be released, Pepsi Next.

This will be marketed as a mid-calorie cola, with 60 instead of 140 calories per can, and I have to ask, “what’s the point?”  I don’t imagine this has a market.  For those who drink calorie-free colas, they are unlikely to make the switch and those who love their full-calorie sodas tend to balk at the flavor of anything pseudo-diet.

Tab (which is a Coke product) is doing something like this, too:

This has 30 calories per can, blah blah blah, but Tab really just reminds me of legwarmers and “Let’s Get Physical” by Olivia Newton-John.

Personally, I stick with the calorie-free (and HFCS-free) sodas like Coke Zero, but when I go full-calorie, I go with Mexican Coke, which I would guess is healthier than calorie-free stuff anyway.  I would never consider an inbetween option, and the more I think about it, this could just be an excuse to drink more soda, which is certainly not what anyone wants these days.

What’s your take?  Post your thoughts in the comments.

Here’s a great summer recipe that’s much easier to make than it sounds:

• A tall glass filled with ice.
• The juice of a whole lime.
• 1/2 oz of rich syrup (microwave 2 parts sugar with 1 part water until liquified, store excess in the fridge up to 3 months).
• Fill remainder with club soda/seltzer water, about 8 or 9 oz.

Now for the sake of comparison, 8 oz of Sierra Mist Natural, while sweetened with real sugar, contains 5 1/4 tsp of sugar.  Coca Cola is similar, but is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup.  This lime soda tastes homemade and contains only 2 tsp of sugar, so it’s a great option for the kids when they want soda, too.

When your leftover coffee grows tepid (our word of the day), pour it into ice trays and stick it in the freezer.  Now you have “coffee ice” to use in your iced coffee, so even as it melts, the iced coffee stays strong.