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Supernatural Exercise

May 17, 2021 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I’ve found another fun way to exercise, and so far I’ve been excited to dig into it every day. It only works for those that have an Oculus Quest (or Quest 2) VR headset, but it’s pretty neat. It’s called Supernatural — here is their promo video:

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The big downside to it, of course, is that you need a VR headset. The Oculus Quest 2 is down to $299, which is quite a good deal, but still a decent chunk of change. As time marches on, though, these devices will continue to get better and cheaper.

The Workout

As for Supernatural itself, it’s a rather intense game. It shares some basic core ideas with Beat Saber by having you hit objects that fly by, but does a few things differently.

First, it goes well beyond just swinging and hitting objects, though that’s certainly the main focus. There are a lot of squats in each workout, and they turn the scene in different directions to keep things moving.

More importantly, the objects you hit are intended to make you move in larger motions with your full arm, whereas Beat Saber lends itself to more “flicking” at objects as they pass by. After 20 minutes, it makes a big difference!

The Music

The music in the game is extraordinary and extensive. I’ve seen a lot of great songs already, and this list shows well over 300 in total, with more being added all the time. They add a new workout every day, which consists of 2-5 songs (depending on total workout duration). I suspect most of those daily workouts use songs already in their system, but it helps keep things fresh.

The Price

This could be the downfall. I’m in the middle of my 30 day trial, but after that it’s $19/mo. That’s not an awful price compared to other home workout apps like Peloton or Mirror, but it’s not insignificant.

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As of now, I still feel kind of like the woman in the video above — I really look forward to traveling to crazy places and working up a sweat. We’ll see if that feeling keeps up after a few more weeks.

If you have an Oculus Quest, I certainly encourage you to give Supernatural a look. If you need an excuse to get a Quest, this could be a good one to use!

Filed Under: Entertainment, Technology

Why are self-titled albums often the best?

April 12, 2021 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: < 1 minute

You see it a lot — not every time, but quite frequently. A band releases their first album and it’s a huge hit, and subsequent releases can’t quite stand up to it.

In cases where this is true, I think there is one big reason for it.

For a band’s first album, they have songs that they’ve been working on for years, if not the better part of their life. They have a ton of material to work from, and have likely played each song thousands of times. It’s the best of their life’s work, with amazing levels of practice put into each song.

If the album does well, they need to get to work coming up with new stuff. Some can do it well, but it’s tough to duplicate that depth of effort in just a year or two.

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Writing can be the same way

I have a friend that is planning to launch a blog later this year. She’s currently working on some early posts for it, and they look great! When it launches, she’ll have some great content that she’s been working on for months (and likely thinking of for years). But then what?

Keeping up the effort and quality is something that gets more difficult as time goes on. Fortunately, your skills improve over time (whether it’s playing a guitar or writing a post), so it’s always interesting to me to see how things shake out when the next piece needs to be written.

Filed Under: Entertainment

What are the odds you’re reading this?

March 27, 2021 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I’ve heard it said that the odds of you being born is roughly one in 400 trillion, which is quite a long shot. As it turns out, your odds of existing are way worse than that.

Years ago, Ali Binazir wrote a long post (it’s gone, but archived version here) that walks through all of the odds.

He ultimately comes to the conclusion that the odds of any of us existing exactly as we came to be at roughly 1 in 102,685,000. That number is impossibly large to get our heads around. For comparison, the number of atoms in the known universe is roughly 1080. That number is also unbelievably large, yet pales in comparison to the odds of us existing.

His example to explain it:

So what’s the probability of your existing? It’s the probability of 2 million people getting together – about the population of San Diego – each to play a game of dice with trillion-sided dice. They each roll the dice, and they all come up the exact same number – say, 550,343,279,001.

I say all of this, because there is an excellent infographic that walks through all of his logic for that number. You can see it below, and click through for a full-size version.

The fact that you exist is literally a miracle.

Filed Under: Entertainment

I thought I knew Chromecast

June 5, 2018 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 4 minutes

I’ve been a big fan of Google Chromecast since it first came out back in 2013. It’s a cheap device ($35) that makes your TV do some magic. If you’re not familiar with them, this video gives a nice overview — note that the video is nearly five years old, so some things have certainly changed, but the basic idea is still the same.

When I decided to finally cut the cord a few days, I thought I knew everything I needed to know about Chromecast. I was wrong. I had the basic idea right, and things are working as expected, but I’ve discovered a few things I felt were worth sharing.

Most of the major streaming services work with Chromecast (YouTube TV, Sling TV, Hulu Live, Netflix, DIRECTV NOW), with the major exception being Amazon Prime Video — and that’s simply due to pettiness between Amazon and Google.

For what we need, it works great.

Not all Chromecasts are created equal

When Google released a slightly newer Chromecast in 2016, I didn’t think much of it. Reviews said it was essentially the same, and I didn’t think I needed one. I used ours relatively infrequently, and when I did it worked fine. We eventually had two TVs with the old one and two with the new one, and I considered them equals.

With live TV, though, it was a different story. Shows from Sling would skip more frequently than I’d like, and YouTube TV would give a warning every time that I should update my Chromecast for a better experience. They were right.

The differences between the two models are subtle, but important. The new model actually has less memory, but much better connectivity and a slightly faster processor. The old one could cache a bit more data (and thus Netflix always worked fine for me), but simply didn’t have the speed to keep up perfectly with live TV. Now that all of our TVs in the house are using the “new” Chromecast (from 2016), the difference is quite noticeable and all is running great.

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Keep it plugged in

Another reason I didn’t use Chromecast too often before was because of the hassle. It’s totally a first-world hassle, but it was enough to turn me off.

  • For regular TV, you turn it on and get watching.
  • For Chromecast, turn on the TV, change the input, wait for it to boot up, then start your show. Not a big deal, but adds up if you have to do it frequently.

Now that we no longer have “regular” TV, changing the input is no longer a problem — the TV always stays on the Chromecast “channel”. However, the TV comes on faster than Chromecast is able to boot up, so there’s still a lag there. The reason is because Chromecast needs external power (you plug one end into your TV, and the other end into a power source) and so it’s often turned off when the TV is off.

Since the Chromecast came with a USB plug, and most of our TVs have a USB outlet, I plugged it in there. It worked! However, when the TV was off it disabled power to that outlet, and turned the Chromecast off as well. I’ve now run the power for the Chromecast to a normal wall outlet, so it stays on even if the TV is turned off.

Not only does that eliminate lag when it turns on, but with most TVs you can “cast” something to the Chromecast and it’ll turn on the TV for you and start playing right away. Pretty handy.

Backdrop could be so awesome

When your Chromecast and TV are turned on but you’re not casting anything, you’re looking at the Chromecast “backdrop”. It looks something like this:

It’s pretty neat. It shows photos from around the world in categories you can choose from, including pulling from your own Google Photos or Facebook. You can have it show the weather in the corner, and even pull in some news headlines.

It’s great, but it could be so much more. I’ve seen various articles about smart mirrors over the years, and it would seem to be pretty simple to integrate those kinds of features into backdrop.

If you’ve ever read an article about DIY “smart mirrors”, they spend most of the time talking about finding the right mirror, trimming stuff off of the tablet, mounting it together, getting power and wifi to it, etc. With Chromecast, all of that stuff is already done — all that’s left is the content piece, which is relatively easy.

Chromecast is already connected to my Google account (hence the ability to add my photos). It would seem to be pretty straightforward to add my next few calendar events, commute time, and some basic info like that.

All of that said, it’s still kind of nice. The TV can just sit there ready for you, showing amazing photography and the weather info.

I’m still a big Chromecast fan, but now I’m much more educated about it too.

Do you use Chromecasts in your house?

Filed Under: Entertainment, Technology

Finally cutting the cord

June 2, 2018 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Despite my constant desire for the latest and greatest technology, I’ve held onto traditional TV delivery until today. We did some digging and just made the switch from Uverse TV (which was really pretty solid) to a handful of streaming services: Netflix, Hulu, YouTube TV and Sling TV.

When AT&T added fiber internet to our neighborhood a few years ago, we jumped on it. The speeds are amazing, and even the TV prices were much lower than Comcast. It was a no-brainer. Now we’re taking it a step further and going with just the fiber internet from them and cutting everything else — we had four DVRs and a bunch of channels. Taking internet by itself (and removing the “bundle discount”) raised the internet price a bit, but still brought our total price down by $152/mo. We added $92 worth of streaming services, for a total savings of about $60/mo.

Starting my research, my only requirement is that it must work with Google Chromecast (since we have them on every TV). That ruled out the Philo service, which otherwise looked pretty solid. We also ruled out DIRECTV NOW; it’s a solid service, but Sling TV worked out better for us.

Here’s what we went with:

Netflix: $10.99

We’ve had Netflix for the past few years anyhow, so this wasn’t a new expense. Lots of great shows and movies in there.

YouTube TV: $40

This is the main service we’ll be using. Not only does it have a ton of good content, but the interface is the best of any of the services out there. It feels a bit more like a traditional cable interface, which might be why I like it.

Sling TV: $44.99

The Sling pricing is a bit weird, but ultimately got us what we needed. YouTube TV covered most of our needs, but Sling added Food Network, HGTV, NFL Red Zone and a bunch of others (Comedy Central, more kids channels, History, MTV, etc). We’re signed up for their “Sling Blue” ($24.99) along with “Sports Extra” ($10) and the “4 Extras” ($10) for more comedy, kids, news and lifestyle.

Hulu: $7.99

Hulu has “Hulu Live” ($39.99), which is similar to Sling and YouTube, but was unnecessary since we had those other two services. However, getting some of the other core Hulu services helped us to round things out.

As we were sorting things out, I build a spreadsheet of the core channels on YouTube TV and Sling TV (with the options outlined above) so we could see how things were covered. While they duplicate quite a few channels, they have a lot on each site that are not on the other. Between the two of them, we have pretty much everything. You can see the full comparison in this PDF.

As an added bonus, YouTube TV works well with Google Home and Chromecast (and we have both in most rooms), so now I can just yell “Hey Google, play the Braves game on YouTube TV in the family room” and it’ll start up. Pretty slick.

Have you cut the cable yet? Which streaming service(s) are you using?

Filed Under: Entertainment, Technology

A Chromecast on every TV

February 14, 2017 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutesI’m a big fan of Google products for two main reasons:

1 – In general, they’re pretty great products (Gmail, Maps, Docs, etc).
2 – They tend to work on every major platform.

Item #2 is why I encourage people to choose the Google Chromecast over Apple TV (or Amazon’s Fire Stick) when looking for a streaming device. We have one on every TV in our house, and it’s the primary tool we use on the TV in our office.

What is Chromecast?

If you’re not familiar with Chromecast, this video from Marques Brownlee does a good job of showing how it works:

Note that his video is a few years old, and many other services are now compatible with it. As Marques explains, the beauty of Chromecast is that it doesn’t stream from your phone — your phone just tells it what to do and then Chromecast pulls the content directly from the internet. This makes for a very smooth experience and saves battery life on your phone.

Apple TV is kind of the opposite; it doesn’t do much on its own, and requires that your device constantly pushes content to it. This have some advantages, since there is no limit to the content you can push that way, but it has some downsides. Apple TV also only works on Apple devices, while Chromecast works on Apple devices, as well as Android and Windows.

What about the Amazon Fire Stick?

This is the one “catch” with Chromecast. Because Amazon has their own competing product, none of the Prime Video streaming content works with Chromecast. It’s not a shortcoming of the Chromecast, per se, but it’s simply that Amazon would prefer that you buy their device. If you need to have your Prime Video shows, the the Amazon Fire Stick might be a good choice. If you typically use other services such as YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, etc, Chromecast is the way to go.

For only $30, it’s a pretty easy choice to make.

How many Chromecasts do you own?

Filed Under: Entertainment, Technology

Friday Favorites 4

February 10, 2017 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutesEvery week I come across new things that I find interesting, and most of them turn into blog posts. However, I also stumble upon a lot of other items that aren’t worth a full post, but are worth sharing. Here are some from the past week.

TV Show: Powerless

It’s cheesy and may not last long, but I’ve enjoyed the first few episodes of NBC’s “Powerless”. The quick overview, from IMDb:

Follow the staff of an insurance company, specialising in products to protect defenseless bystanders from the collateral damage of Superheroes and Supervillains.

It has some decent names in it and it’s been fun so far, so we’ll see what happens!

Learn more and catch up here: nbc.com/powerless

Accessory: Android Wear 2

Google just unveiled version two of their “Android Wear” software for watches, and it’s looking pretty impressive. The new software should arrive on my Moto 360 in a few weeks, but Google also released a few new watches to showcase the new software. This video is a good overview of what’s new:

Event: WordCamp Atlanta

It doesn’t happen until next month, but tickets for WordCamp Atlanta 2017 went on sale yesterday. They will sell out very quickly, so go get your tickets now!

Photo

This was from our annual “Daddy / Daughter Date Night” at Chick-Fil-A. The girls are almost too old for it, but as long as they want to go, I’m happy to take them!

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What other great things have you come across this week?

Filed Under: Entertainment

Friday Favorites 3

February 3, 2017 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutesEvery week I come across new things that I find interesting, and most of them turn into blog posts. However, I also stumble upon a lot of other items that aren’t worth a full post, but are worth sharing. Here are some from the past week.

Game: Stardew Valley

If you take a little Minecraft, a little Farmville and perhaps a bit of The Sims, and then throw it into a very 8-bit looking world, you get Stardew Valley. The girls and I have been playing this for the last week and it’s pretty neat. The video below shows a bit more about what it’s like.

Get it here: stardewvalley.net

TV Show: Designated Survivor

It’s on a bit of a hiatus for now (until March), but there are at least a dozen more episodes coming and I’m excited to see more.

The basic plot is that essentially the bulk of the US government is killed in a terrorist attack, leaving the US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Tom Kirkman (played by Kiefer Sutherland) to become the new president. He has his struggled, but I so wish I could have voted for him back in November…

Learn more and catch up here: abc.go.com/shows/designated-survivor

Accessory: APC Back-UPS

The power in our office went out briefly this week (as it does every month or two), and it’s a pain for me. Everyone else uses a laptop and stays up and running to some degree, but my desktop computer powers all the way down and I need to start my session fresh. It’s not a huge deal, but it’s annoying. To solve that, I ordered a battery backup so it won’t happen again.

Amazon: APC Back-UPS 600VA

Photo

Last our Meetup on January 26 we had three guests (Jenny Munn of The Munn Group, Adam Walker of Sideways8 and Daniel Swain of JDS Web Design) to talk about ways to grow your business in 2017. You can check out the video and notes from the Meetup here.

What other great things have you come across this week?

Filed Under: Business, Entertainment

Friday Favorites 2

January 27, 2017 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 3 minutesEvery week I come across new things that I find interesting, and most of them turn into blog posts. However, I also stumble upon a lot of other items that aren’t worth a full post, but are worth sharing. Here are some from the past week.

Game: Dots & Co

It’s the third in a series of “Dots” games (following “Dots” and “Two Dots”) and is proving to be quite addictive. It’s pretty simple, like many other “match the color” games, but has some rather tough strategy. It’s free, so just give it a shot.

Get it here: Android | iPhone

Podcast: The Way I Heard It

I previously told you about the Adam Ruins Everything podcast, but there is another podcast competing for attention with it called “The Way I Heard It”. It’s hosted by Mike Rowe (who you might recognize from the show “Dirty Jobs” and various Ford commercials) and it’s a spin on Paul Harvey’s classic “The Rest of the Story”. Mike even says it’s inspired by that, and he does a great job of capturing that essence. Each one is only about five minutes long, and they’re great.

Check it out at: mikerowe.com/podcast

TV Show: Timeless

I’m finding myself becoming a pretty big fan of the NBC show “Timeless“. It’s a bit cheesy, but fun and leaves me wanting more. Here is how it’s described:

When a mysterious criminal steals a secret state-of-the-art time machine, planning to use it to change past events to destroy America in the present, the only hope is a team of unexpected heroes composed of a scientist, a soldier and a history professor. The trio must use the stolen machine’s prototype to journey back in time to critical events, being careful not to affect history themselves, while working to stay one step ahead of the villain who would unravel the timeline and understand the mystery driving his mission before it’s too late.

On a fun sidenote, this is the fourth “..less” show I’ve enjoyed in the past year. 2016 had “Limitless” (which was great, but canceled), “Speechless” (comedy), now “Timeless” and coming soon is “Powerless” (about some hopeless wanna-be superheroes, it seems).

Photo:

My favorite photo since my last Friday Favorite was this one was from a nice evening we had where the girls had some friends over to roast marshmallows over a campfire in the back yard.

What other great things have you come across this week?

Filed Under: Entertainment

Friday Favorites

January 13, 2017 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 4 minutesEvery week I come across new things that I find interesting, and most of them turn into blog posts. However, I also stumble upon a lot of other items that aren’t worth a full post, but are worth sharing. Here are some from the past week.

Game: Flick Kick Field Goal

With all of the football I’ve watched in the past few weeks, I was inspired to re-download an old favorite: Flick Kick Field Goal

It’s pretty simple. Flick your finger on the screen to kick field goals. Distance and wind will affect your kicks, and they have a variety of mini-games in there to keep things interesting. It’s a shallow game, but fun to burn a few minutes from time to time.

Get it here: Android | iPhone

Podcast: Adam Ruins Everything

I’m getting back into podcasts a bit, and the first great one I want to share is Adam Ruins Everything. Adam Conover tackles everyday topics (such as voting, global warming, etc) and “ruins” them by breaking down misconceptions about them.

He has a TV show on Tru TV (which is funny and informative, but kind of weird), and the podcast is a more serious look at those same topics.

Check it out at: http://www.maximumfun.org/shows/adam-ruins-everything

Accessory: Anker USB charger

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With a few new laptops in our office that charge via USB-C, we needed more chargers to support those. This awesome Anker charger is a great solution. The top port will power a USB-C laptop (such as the new Macbook Pro or my new Chromebook), then then you get four more ports to charge other devices.

You can get it here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01D8C6ULO/

Photo: Charging station

I didn’t take too many photos this week, but I got ambitious a few nights ago and built a charging station in my home office for the family. Lots of plugs for iPhones and Android phones, tablets, Kindles, laptops, Chromebooks and various other accessories. You’ll even notice the Anker charger (mentioned in the section above) at the top left of the photo.

News

A couple of interesting new stories.

A vast new tomb for the most dangerous waste in the world – Chernobyl’s new sarcophagus took two decades to make. Bigger than Wembley Stadium and taller than the Statue of Liberty, it will seal in the entire disaster site for 100 years.

Was 2016 especially dangerous for celebrities? An empirical analysis. – A statistical look at just how bad 2016 was for celebrities.

Book: Blue Ocean Strategy

Inspired by my friend Daniel at JDS Web Design, a handful of us are reading the book Blue Ocean Strategy. I’ve not gone too far into it yet, but here’s what they promise on the Amazon page for it:

This global bestseller, embraced by organizations and industries worldwide, challenges everything you thought you knew about the requirements for strategic success. Now updated with fresh content from the authors, Blue Ocean Strategy argues that cutthroat competition results in nothing but a bloody red ocean of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool. Based on a study of 150 strategic moves (spanning more than 100 years across 30 industries), the authors argue that lasting success comes not from battling competitors but from creating “blue oceans”—untapped new market spaces ripe for growth.

Learn more here: https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/

Video: 4 larger-than-life lessons from soap operas

I met Kate Adams at a BMA board meeting earlier this week, and her story is awesome. She worked for years as an assistant casting director for As the World Turns and shares some great lessons that we can learn from the show.

Other

I’ll leave you with some great animations showing how they did some amazing special effects back in the says of silent films.

View them all here: http://imgur.com/a/wUAcl

What other great things have you come across this week?

Filed Under: Entertainment

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