First things first, I opened a brew that my friend gave me. It was several years old (yes, I said years), so it formed a huge head which eventually settled into a scary monkey face.

With that out of the way, I pulled my grains out of the freezer where I had been storing them for about 5 days. After I brewed, I actually dried the grains for a few hours in direct sunlight, and then when the sun was gone, I put them in the oven on the lowest setting for about 5 hours to get them nice and dry.

I threw some grains into the coffee grinder and got them nice and fine. I think I went a little too fine and will leave them more hearty next time. I also didn’t have the 3 cups of grains that the recipe called for, only about 2.5. I filled the remaining 1/2 cup with whole wheat flour instead.

This was the only recipe that I found online that called for an egg, so here’s a nice pretty shot of it all beaten up.

Jasmine’s recipe called for sugar, but I used honey instead. I’m pretty sure the 1/4 cup was not enough, so I’d up that to at least 1/2 cup next time, or at least use the honey in addition to the sugar. She gave the option of 1/4 cup of butter or olive oil, and I chose butter. For the milk, I substituted almond milk (original flavor).

After adding all the ingredients to the mix, it looked like this and I could tell it needed more moisture.

I added another cup of milk and that didn’t do much to help, so I added two more for a total of 4 cups of milk to give it some moisture. Finally, I was able to get it to look like this.

I’m pretty sure the lack of moisture came from me drying my grains instead of using them wet like Jasmine did. At any rate, it was time to put the ball in the oiled bowl and let it rise for 90 minutes. When that was done, I split it into 3 loaves and let it rise for another hour. I made a time lapse of the rising with one photo every minute.

I’m not sure what happened during this phase, but it really didn’t rise as much as I think it should have. My guess is that the yeast weren’t working hard enough, or there wasn’t enough sugar for them to eat. Another reason why I will be doubling the honey for the next batch.

I rubbed some water on the top of each loaf and scored them, then threw them in the oven for 50 minutes. They came out looking just slightly larger than when they went in.

As you can see, this is really dense bread. It smells like the wort when I was boiling on brew day, and that’s a great smell. The best part is that it even tastes like it smells! It’s pretty sweet bread, but not overpowering as if it were cake. You probably wouldn’t want to make a sandwich out of it, but it was definitely amazing with a little butter or honey on a thin slice. Better yet, try it with a little honey butter and it’s a really nice treat.

Thanks to Jasmine for the recipe. Happy baking and brewing!

A friend and co-worker, Jesse Inman, recently introduced me to the grid system. I’ve been really impressed with the way it responds to the viewport, and the ease with which it allows a designer to add blocks of content to a site. Here’s another grid system that has some differences.

With that in mind, I updated my blog theme to one that is built on a grid. What this means is that you can view my site in a browser on a desktop, tablet, or smartphone and it will automatically scale itself down to fit best on that particular device. You can test it out if you’re using a desktop browser right now. Resize your browser’s width all the way as small as you can get it, and watch how it intelligently reformats the content.

I know the looks of the site aren’t all that special right now, but I’m hoping to do an update to that aspect when I get around to it.

Some suggestions were drastic including a full restore of the iPhone, and others were annoying by suggesting that you call at&t customer support. All that noise sounded like way too much of a headache to me, so I just did a simple power cycle (turn off the phone, then turn it back on), and that fixed it. Amazingly simple. I’ve made it a habit to start with that as my first step of troubleshooting my iPhone, computers, routers, modems, cable boxes, etc. Sometimes it fixes it, and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s nice when it does.

I settled on Music Rescue, which costs £10 to register, but you can download and try it for free.

When you first launch it with your iPhone plugged in, it automagically recognizes it and gives you the option to open it or QuickRecover. Pretty smart, eh? I chose to open it, because I didn’t know what QuickRecover would do. I’m ignorant. I admit it.

After you open it, you can see the contents of your iPhone in a beautiful and very iTunes-esque interface. I’m not saying iTunes is the best, but at least it eliminates the learning curve. You have access to view and playback your music, movies, podcasts, and audiobooks. I didn’t have any TV shows on my iPhone, but it appears to handle all media on your iPhone. Probably not voice recordings, though.

I was impressed with all the options in the preferences to customize how you want the app to behave. Very flexible and useful. You can even setup a profile for your device that will be stored on the device itself so that when you plug into other computers with Music Rescue, it will remember the settings. This could be useful if you want to keep two computer music libraries synced through the use of your iPhone.

When you’re ready to start the copy, click the button in the bottom right corner that says “Begin Copy…” and you’re presented with some options of which media you want to copy as shown below. I love options and flexibility! I also love the little encouragement in the bottom left, “Don’t steal music.” Isn’t that Apple’s line?

If you use the software in the Demo mode, then you’ll be nagged every 50 songs with this little window which goes away by clicking OK. I love developers who tell you it isn’t free software, yet they let you use it for free. It’s like those companies that send you free return address labels, but then ask you to send in a donation if you plan on using them. Yeah, ok, I’ll get right on that.

It’s a small annoyance, but if you use this more than once, it would definitely be worth it to purchase a license key. After all your media is copied from the iPhone, it then opens iTunes and adds it to the library. If there are conflicts, it warns you and gives you options for overwriting, skipping, or merging data. How very thoughtful!

Overall, a very flexible, easy, quick, and painless procedure to get my music off my iPhone. I highly recommend this software to anyone in the same boat.

P.S. They also offer a Windows version, but I have not tested it. Let me know how it works for you.

1. I don’t get it.
2. I don’t care what people are doing, and I don’t want people to know what I’m doing.

I can understand the first reason, but it’s the second reason I take issue with. If you are the person who tells me you don’t care what other people are doing, and you also don’t want people to know what you’re doing, then you need to stop texting me everything you’re doing throughout the day!

• Stop texting me that you had the best burrito ever.
• Stop texting me that you found a great deal on shoes at Payless.
• Stop texting me how tired you are because you didn’t sleep well last night.
• Stop texting me to tell me you’re going to bed now.
• Stop texting me what your mom/dad/brother/sister just said to you.
• Stop texting me asking what I’m doing.

These are all the sort of things Twitter was made for. You bash on the service, yet you do it on a smaller scale by individually texting all your friends the same message. Knock it off, and start Twittering!

There are two three methods. One is easy, one is for the geeks, and the third is an in between one.

Method 1: iTunes [easy]

When you plug your iPhone into iTunes, go to the Music tab and make sure that there is a check mark next to “Include voice memos”. This will automatically sync your voice memos into their own playlist in iTunes where you can then do whatever you’d like with them. Here’s a screenshot of where to look in iTunes.

Method 2: SSH for Jailbroken iPhones [geeky]

If you have your iPhone jailbroken, you can SSH into it and pull the recordings off manually. They’ll play just fine in iTunes or QuickTime and then you can convert them to another format if you want.

In your SFTP program (I use Cyberduck, it’s free), go to this path to find the recordings:
/private/var/mobile/Media/Recordings

Method 3: iExplorer [in between]

I’ve had a lot of questions about this, so I’m adding it to the post. If the previous methods didn’t work, this one is also pretty easy, although it requires installing iExplorer. It’s third-party software for Mac and PC and your phone doesn’t need to be jailbroken. Here’s a step-by-step for using iExplorer:

1. Download and install iExplorer.
   • Version 2 is free, but version 3 has a demo mode that will allow you to transfer the memo for free. You can find both versions on the downloads page.
2. Connect your iPhone via USB cable to your computer and open iExplorer.
3. Click the arrow next to your iPhone’s name, and then navigate to:
   /Media/Recordings/
4. Locate the voice memo you’d like to download. They will be named with the date they were created, such as:
   20110210 114619.m4a
5. Once you see it, you can drag it to your Desktop or any other folder on your computer

how amazingly far we’ve come with technology. However, sometimes I just want to wring someone’s neck for being lazy or not caring.

I checked Borders for two items: a book by John Eldredge, and a Moleskine notebook. Both inventory reports for the Mission Viejo Borders said that it was “likely in store.” I reserved it online by putting in my name and email address, and the confirmation page told me to wait for an email within two hours to tell me if it was in stock or not. Well, I didn’t want to wait, and figured they would at least have one of the two in stock, so I drove down there.

When I got there, I checked my iPhone for an email, but nothing. I went straight to the Moleskine spinning display and found about 10 of the notebooks that I wanted. I grabbed one, and headed for the other book. I found the last copy on the shelves within about 5 minutes, and headed for the check stand. I checked my email again on the way to find the following email:

We’re sorry to say that the remaining stock of the item you requested has been purchased since our last online availability update. [Edited for relevance.]

The books were in my hands, so clearly the system kinda broke down somewhere. Apparently the website sends an email to the store, which is then taken by an employee to hunt down the request. When they don’t find it, they notify the website that they don’t have it and then you are emailed. When I asked the checkout clerk what might have gone wrong with the system, she said that it probably just got put on the shelves right before I picked it off the shelf. That means that when the employee looked for it, it hadn’t been stocked yet. This doesn’t make any sense because the website said that the book was “likely in store” which would mean that the system had some sort of awareness that the book could possibly be there.

My theory for what happened: Request landed in the hands of one of the lazy, coffee drinking, mohawked, minimum waged employees who wiped his nose with the paper, and then reported back that it wasn’t in stock so that he could go take another smoke break. He probably thought it wouldn’t matter because who would be stupid enough to go to the store when they told you they don’t have what you’re looking for? What he didn’t account for was my impatience… and maybe a little bit of my stupidity.

I guess it bugs me because it could have caused me some inconvenience had I waited and trusted what they said. If they didn’t have it, then I probably would have had to drive to a farther bookstore which would have wasted my gas and time. Or I might have ordered it online which would mean that I have to wait till next week to get it.

I know, I know, I shouldn’t complain because it’s pretty amazing that it’s possible for almost anyone to get their hands on virtually every written word in the world within a week. These huge stores provide vast amounts of learning possibilities and wisdom from millennia ago that would blow the minds exponentially of every reader going back thousands of years. It’s just a shame that forward progress can be halted by one lazy person.

In my footer.php file, I found the code <?php do_action('get footer'); ?> at the bottom of the file just before the </body> tag. This seemed to be retrieving the spam links in the footer.

I found some help on the WordPress forums, so I guess it’s a known problem.

Apparently, this user only follows people who have the name “Alex” or “Casey” with the exception of some famous Twitterers like Kevin Rose and John McCain.

The notification email sent to me said that “Cody Hutchison” was now following my updates. This user, who also goes by “footballguy166″, has what I can only describe as a fetish. He seems to be collecting a certain type of Twitterer, but not based on what they tweet. He’s following 365 people and hasn’t posted a single update, which makes me wonder what the heck is going on. It’s like a train wreck. I can’t NOT look and wonder what’s gonna happen.

Do you have any weird followers or experiences on Twitter?

My favorite part is if you view “Talking about ads” and keep your eye on tweets near Lake Forest, CA, you’ll see at the end of the game the most used word was “fail”. I’m not sure what ad it’s referring to, or if it’s even referring to an ad at all, but it only appears in Lake Forest.

The word is definitely not localized to Orange County, as was noted on Slate.com. Apparently, it comes from a video game with poor Japanese-to-English translation.

It’s nearly impossible to pinpoint the first reference, given how common the verb fail is, but online commenters suggest it started with a 1998 Neo Geo arcade game called Blazing Star. (References to the fail meme go as far back as 2003.) Of all the game’s obvious draws—among them fast-paced action, disco music, and anime-style cut scenes—its staying power comes from its wonderfully terrible Japanese-to-English translations. If you beat a level, the screen flashes with the words: “You beat it! Your skill is great!” If you lose, you are mocked: “You fail it! Your skill is not enough! See you next time! Bye bye!”

For a while now, I’ve personally noticed the use of “fail” increase in everyday speech, mostly under the age of 25. I’m not sure why, but I really get a kick out of this word when it’s used like this. Maybe it’s because it’s so simple and to the point. Maybe it’s the way it perfectly embodies the arrogance of the cyber geek who casts judgement and ridicule from the safety his armchair.  Maybe it’s because of the many images that I’ve seen this word tattooed on. Maybe it’s a combination of all the above.

Whatever the reason, I have to soak in the enjoyment from this meme as much as I can. As history has taught us about slang, it won’t last forever!