Leaving Thursday to chaperone a group of High School Youth from St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Des Peres, Missouri on a trip to Alaska. It will be a unique change from our comfortable life, and hopefully as much of an uplifting and insightful trip for them as I am sure it will be for me. I’ll try to corner some “guest posters” from our group to pass along some of their thoughts.
Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we travel.
We’ve had the domain scissorfree.com available for awhile. The name is a bit of a play on the idea of a digital coupon, that doesn’t have to be cut out of a magazine or newspaper, therefore it is “scissor free”. The purpose of this site is to promote digital coupons, especially those with readable codes, that provide useful business intelligence for the developer of the coupon. As we move into more digitalvariable print, the incorporation of tracking codes on and individual basis comes along with the territory, and with that an abundance of useful information to the coupon provider.
While reviewing some lists of domains that needed to be renewed, I was reminded of a domain that I registered during the peak of the BP oil spill.
Energy is an important part of a modern, developed world, and an issue that will have to be dealt with. My hope is to discuss a variety of alternative energy sources, and try to investigate them based on what infrastructure would need to be built and sustained, how scalable it is, and how portable it is, among other factors.
I just recently registered the pizzaovenoutdoors.com domain for a prototype I am working on for a natural gas powered outdoor pizza oven. It certainly would not be restricted to only baking pizzas, but that would be the first target.
A little background… I purchased an natural gas burner from outdoorstirfry.com, first as a way to hook up my smoker to the natural gas supply from the house. I kept the burner disconnected from the smoker, so I could utilize it in different ways. Was also hunting online for different things to cook in the smoker, and somehow came to some information about pizzas on the grill, so I tried it in the smoker, with the new higher BTU burner, but it really didn’t get hot enough to brown the crust or the cheese, so I found further info about cooking it on a gas grill, which I have done several times to tasty success, but …
I couldn’t get the grill hot enough, or the heat directed enough to put a nice brown on the cheese, so I started looking at outdoor pizza ovens, and after falling over backwards at their prices, I figured I could try something on my own.
I’ve got a starter design, just haven’t built it yet, but hope to soon, and we’ll see how the experiment goes. If you have any ideas, feel free to drop me a comment.
With the humorous ways I’ve seen dogs eat peanut butter, it seems to me with the right mix of flouride, or some other additive, it would work as a great proxy for the hassle of brushing your dog’s teeth. Does anyone actually keep up with that, or is there tubes of “doggie toothpaste” mostly unused in homes everywhere?
“Even an expert knows nothing about a lot of things”. I don’t know if someone has said it before. If they have, let me know and I’ll attribute it to them. My point from this is not to disparage experts, as many (or all) of us are experts in areas that we deal with everyday. However, the reality is that the scope of knowledge is so broad that no one can possibly know more than a small fraction of the intricacies of the complicated wonder that is humankind.
A simple example for me is the show “Dirty Jobs” hosted by Mike Rowe. Just about every episode, I catch myself thinking “I had no idea you could make a living doing a job like that”. And those are just the dirty jobs, just imagine the scope of clean ones 
This was an idea from long ago, that still lies dormant. I suppose with the improved quality of spell checkers, etc, the need for a human being to review your written comments has gone down somewhat. That was the original idea of the site, with two relatives of our company with English and/or Journalism degrees, we thought we could leverage their ability to help with the written word to the digital world.
How’s this for impactful digital? This is a new capability we created through MediaConstructionKit.com. We are able to merge variable data onto a four color (CMYK) postcard (or any other printable piece), using the capabilities of Photoshop (hence the merged line, and the more random looking lettering (notice that the two r’s in Christopher are not identical).
The use of a digital press, and the standardization on the pdf file format makes this technology availalble and transportable. We can send a press-ready pdf anywhere in the world in a matter of minutes, for production and mailing.
A friend of mine has a rental bus company in St. Louis, called the Road Pony, and they just purchased a new bus, that they are contemplating a new interior design. Was wondering if anyone had done any work with large LED tape, and an arduino box (or similar) to have the ceiling light up in beats to the music.
With two children active in youth hockey, and an active personal interest in the sport, we are regularly looking for open ice sessions, stick and pucks, or pond hockey. I’d like to develop a resource where people can find available games and locations at a level suitable for them.
With square credit card processing, or other means, it would be possible to set up a prepayment system.
