I found this little gem in a Wired piece reviewing some of the best (coffee) brewing methods. And…Aeropress is amongst the cream of the crop (if not THE best).

I absolutely love my Aeropressed coffee – it’s great every single time, and I especially love handgrinding my own beans right before hand – something about it is relaxing yet oddly cathartic about mashing up those little guys.

Just watching this video makes me want to go for my class Cafe con Leche right now..

Aeropress brewing guide from Tim Wendelboe on Vimeo.

Gay marriage has become a really hot topic recently because of the supreme court activity, and it got me thinking a little more about it. Recently, an old classmate posted an article with one of the only LEGITIMATE arguments against it. It said that allowing gay marriage would change the very definition of “marriage”. Before, this never seemed to matter at all, so I always wondered why anybody would be so against it (excluding religious beliefs, of course). Why would anybody be against giving more people basic rights to happiness?

Then I had an epiphany. Gay marriage isn’t as victimless as I once thought. Marriage, once you dig past the “unity between a man and woman” facade, is better defined as “the legal right to be called one’s spouse.” One of the big benefits of being called someone’s spouse comes in the form of insurance. For instance, a person working at a job that provides health insurance can insure their spouse as well. This is because, traditionally, it has been difficult for a wife to sustain a job while bearing and raising children. If gay people can get married, their partners are then eligible for this coverage. Basically, the more people that have marriage rights, the more coverage insurance companies and employers, big and small, will need to pay for. And that’s bad for business.These are the parties that lose when gay marriage wins. 

That’s right folks; in the end it’s all about the money. Although what did you really expect from the land of the free (trade) and home of the brave (entrepreneurs)? 

The issue lies less among who should be allowed to marry, and more in whether marriage has too much of a role in our economic society. If the concept of marriage is destroyed when gays can marry, isn’t it about time we acknowledged that marriage has needed fixing for a long time already? What about the people who marry for green cards, insurance benefits, or inheritances? What about rampant divorce? Can’t we see that marriage has many problems, and gay people aren’t the ones to blame?

Interesting thoughts. Maybe this backs it up?

Even the typically conservative wing of the court maintained that, despite their personal views, it would be “downright silly” for them to rule that same-sex marriage was unconstitutional.

“I’m a strict Originalist, Mr. Cooper, and I’m looking at a 14th Amendment that forbids any state from denying any person equal protection of the law,” Associate Justice Antonin Scalia said. “So, unless we are the most uncivilized society on the face of God’s green earth, I think we can all agree that a gay person is in fact a person. So what I’m saying is, who the fuck are we to tell a person who he or she can get married to? This is dumb. Can we talk about a real case now, please?”

Before adjourning the court, Roberts said there would be no official opinion on the case because it’s just “common goddamn sense.”

“Can we talk about a real case now please?”

From The Onion – brilliant.

Fascinating analysis of where PBR (vs. Bud Light) is served relative to purported hipster locales.

Big Data strikes again!

Good to know. Now, is there a fix for the fact that sometimes it just refuses to wake up at all and requires a reset?

New group cover photo for the (electro) Music group on Facebook. Celebrating two weekends of #Ultralive

It’s too bad that the answer to that question is “pretty f***ing revolutionary” – you’d think that other people or establishments would’ve started to fix this by now. But this is why they say that large companies are like trying to turn a barge – it can only happen slowly. Where as startups are like little tugboats – swift and flexible, but not too much power.

I’m thinking this startup is gonna be a huge hit. I can’t wait to IM (is that a term anymore?) my doctor and say “Hey, what do I do if I cut my finger open with my Chef’s Knife, lol.” 

“Let me book an urgent care appointment and come right in to our office. Done! Check your app for exact location and directions.”

Yep. The future is coming.

This is exactly why I love KeepOn and have wanted one for years. Oh yeah, this video is also awesome, featuring Spoon’s “Don’t You Evah.”

This feature from Polygon on “How Milo met Kate” is brilliant. In particular, this video is quite the highlight – it’s a director commentary on the making of Milo. When I was watching the video, I couldn’t help but start to feel something – a fleeting moment of empathy with the character Milo. Maybe it’s the way the camera is angled at eye level, or how its a handheld camera so that it feels natural rather than literally “on rails”, or the great motion capture and voice acting…all these things together provide a beautiful backdrop, but what really makes it come alive is the interaction. Milo responds in a way that plays off of your interactions, your emotional state, what you say, how you say it…that’s what really brings about this almost-human connection.

Already when we look at the technology space, we see people develop a fanboy-like syndrome. People will go to the ends of the earth…or rather, forums…to debate how great Apple or Android is, to the point of punching each other in the face if they were to meet “IRL.” This kind of affinity for a piece of technology is astounding to say the least, and is certainly something we never saw with ordinary appliances like the microwave, the toaster, and other single-use equipments. Maybe it’s the breadth of interaction that’s possible that breeds this sort of emotional affinity for the object.

Remember the Tamagotchi? Those things are almost like the spiritual precursor to cell phones for people my age – we would carry them around everywhere, feed them when they got hungry, give them gifts, connect them so they could interact and mate, and it would even get into moods based on how you interacted with it. If it was hungry for a long time, of course your Tamagotchi was going to be mad at you! If you praised it when it went poop in the toilet, it would learn that was the right thing to do. And just like an iPhone now, we would use it everyday.

So imagine if your phone – soon to be everyone’s always on, always there companion – could respond to your emotional states. Maybe it could track biological measures like your heart rate, your neural state, your breathing, the places your going, what you’re writing, the tone of your voice commands, and start to infer a picture of your current state. If it detects that you’re happy, maybe it’ll respond cheerfully to your requests, or pop up notifications to ask you to record why you’re so cheery. If you’re depressed, maybe it can suggest places to go, give you a good quote, suggest friends you haven’t talked to in a long time to reach.

Everyone talks about Natural User Interfaces these days, and making things more intuitive to use. I think that’s the “now” with technology such as Kinect and motion/gesture-tracking coming to laptops soon. But the next leap will be to bring the potential of Milo and Kate to your smartphone – your always there companion – it’ll be the next evolution of Google Now, adding emotion to the mix of predictors for what you’ll want.

Maybe it’s weird, but I look forward to the day when I view technology not just as a servant, but as a true companion in my day-to-day adventures.