Hope you get to ring out the year with loved ones and good will!
Happy Holidays!
Showing posts with label happy new year. Show all posts
Showing posts with label happy new year. Show all posts
Sunday, December 25, 2016
Season's Greetings!
2016, a year that hardly any American will be able to forget.
Hope you get to ring out the year with loved ones and good will!
Happy Holidays!
Hope you get to ring out the year with loved ones and good will!
Happy Holidays!
Sunday, February 8, 2015
The Automated Life
First of all, Happy New Year! 2015 is going to be great! Yeah!
Okay. Now back to our regularly scheduled program...
Lately, I've been spending a lot of time looking into ways I can upgrade my life through automation. We don't have readily available self-driving cars (yet), but we do have a smoke detector that will talk to us instead of shrieking. It's so kind, it'll even text us to let us know if it detects smoke while we're away.
Do you want to be able to control the lights and other electronics in your house while you're on vacation? Or maybe, like me, you're one of those who has to turn around and head back home just to make sure the curling iron was turned off. Never fear - WeMo is here!
Unfortunately for me, my disposable income doesn't allow for much more than the occasional tube of lipstick these days. It will be a while before my home is on its way to sentience.
In addition to gazing endlessly at all of the lovely gadgets I can't afford, I've been tinkering with "recipes" on "If This Then That" (IFTTT), a free service that allows you to create simple programs to automate things across some of your favorite websites and apps.
I know, I know. "Programming?! Buh!!!" But I swear it's easier than you think!
IFTTT programs (or "recipes," as they're called) only consist of 2 elements: a trigger and an action. If something is triggered, then there will be an action.
To give you an example, here is one of my favorite recipes:
How does this recipe work? If it finds a picture on Instagram that has a particular hashtag, then it will save it into a folder in your Dropbox account. In other words, it allows you to save all of the pictures your guests post onto Instagram of your wedding (or whatever type of party or event). All you have to do is ask them to add a designated hashtag to all of the pictures they post of the party, and IFTTT will do the rest.
One of the cool things you can do with this particular recipe (in addition to making an awesome scrapbook) is to have a laptop connected to a projector or TV at your event and have it play a slideshow from the synced Dropbox folder. You and your guests will be able to enjoy the pictures throughout the course of the party.
Before you can start creating recipes, you'll need to activate all the "channels" you'd like to use (a.k.a. give permission for IFTTT to access your apps). Once activated, you'll have access to each channel's various triggers and actions so that you can customize your recipes. By activating the weather channel and the Phone Call channel, for instance, you can have IFTTT give you a wake-up call with the day's weather forecast every morning. Or use the weather channel and the WeMo Light Switch channel to have your porch lights (outfitted with a WeMo Light Switch) automatically turn on at sunset and off at sunrise. The possibilities are endless!
Here are a few of my own:
You may ask, Why? Is it really so hard to click a few extra buttons and do these things yourself? No, it's not. But it is tedious. That's what automation is all about. It's not there to make you lazy; it's there to make you more efficient. Why waste your time and energy doing tedious things, when you can use that extra time on other work or being with your loved ones? If you're anything like me, you could probably use that extra time to just relax.
Okay. Now back to our regularly scheduled program...
Lately, I've been spending a lot of time looking into ways I can upgrade my life through automation. We don't have readily available self-driving cars (yet), but we do have a smoke detector that will talk to us instead of shrieking. It's so kind, it'll even text us to let us know if it detects smoke while we're away.
Do you want to be able to control the lights and other electronics in your house while you're on vacation? Or maybe, like me, you're one of those who has to turn around and head back home just to make sure the curling iron was turned off. Never fear - WeMo is here!
Unfortunately for me, my disposable income doesn't allow for much more than the occasional tube of lipstick these days. It will be a while before my home is on its way to sentience.
In addition to gazing endlessly at all of the lovely gadgets I can't afford, I've been tinkering with "recipes" on "If This Then That" (IFTTT), a free service that allows you to create simple programs to automate things across some of your favorite websites and apps.
I know, I know. "Programming?! Buh!!!" But I swear it's easier than you think!
IFTTT programs (or "recipes," as they're called) only consist of 2 elements: a trigger and an action. If something is triggered, then there will be an action.
To give you an example, here is one of my favorite recipes:
How does this recipe work? If it finds a picture on Instagram that has a particular hashtag, then it will save it into a folder in your Dropbox account. In other words, it allows you to save all of the pictures your guests post onto Instagram of your wedding (or whatever type of party or event). All you have to do is ask them to add a designated hashtag to all of the pictures they post of the party, and IFTTT will do the rest.
One of the cool things you can do with this particular recipe (in addition to making an awesome scrapbook) is to have a laptop connected to a projector or TV at your event and have it play a slideshow from the synced Dropbox folder. You and your guests will be able to enjoy the pictures throughout the course of the party.
Before you can start creating recipes, you'll need to activate all the "channels" you'd like to use (a.k.a. give permission for IFTTT to access your apps). Once activated, you'll have access to each channel's various triggers and actions so that you can customize your recipes. By activating the weather channel and the Phone Call channel, for instance, you can have IFTTT give you a wake-up call with the day's weather forecast every morning. Or use the weather channel and the WeMo Light Switch channel to have your porch lights (outfitted with a WeMo Light Switch) automatically turn on at sunset and off at sunrise. The possibilities are endless!
Here are a few of my own:
You may ask, Why? Is it really so hard to click a few extra buttons and do these things yourself? No, it's not. But it is tedious. That's what automation is all about. It's not there to make you lazy; it's there to make you more efficient. Why waste your time and energy doing tedious things, when you can use that extra time on other work or being with your loved ones? If you're anything like me, you could probably use that extra time to just relax.
Thursday, January 2, 2014
To a 2014 We Can All Be Okay With!
Happy New Year, everyone!!!
Yes, that (above) is how I rang in the new year. I lead a sad, sad life... LOL.
My brother gave me a Nintendo 3DS XL for Christmas, along with Animal Crossing: New Leaf (a game from one of my favorite franchises). Needless to say, I've been stuck to this thing ever since.
When I heard that Nintendo was releasing a new Animal Crossing title back in 2012, I had to contain my excitement. Coming upon my mid-30s now, I wanted to try my hand at being a "responsible adult," like how I remember my parents* and other adults in my life being at around that age... Ha!
After spending the last month or so living vicariously through this one guy on YouTube, my brother decided that enough was enough. Thanks to some awesome discounts during this holiday season (by the by, senseless violence and all around bad mojo during Black Friday is meaningless, my friends - it's a fact that similar or even better sales happen closer to Christmastime), he was able to buy the game and a game system for both himself and me.
So there ↑ I am, after politely turning down a few invitations (sorry, guys), celebrating #HNY2014... I mean, I make it sound bad, but really - so what? It ended up being a nice, quiet night in with my mom and my brother (who also happened to be celebrating the new year in his own Animal Crossing town) - what's wrong with that?
Which brings me to my one and only resolution for the new year: to be okay with things. In past years, I would've been calling and texting everyone, trying to fish for any information regarding New Year's Eve events. And if I didn't get the "right" invite, I would feel like I was being left out or missing out, and I would stew over it. And not just New Year's Eve, but with other things in life, too.
Being competitive and goal-oriented is one thing, but you shouldn't spend all of your energy putting yourself down when things don't turn out the way you had imagined. For those of you with a similar type of personality, I'm sure you've noticed (or will at some point) how tiring and draining it is to do that to yourself. It's like having someone (a boss, a parent, a sibling, a partner) nagging in your ear nonstop, 24/7. After enduring that, you have little to no energy or desire to get back up and try again.
I've decided that I've had enough with that kind of behavior - I'm going to start being okay with things. Don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to be satisfied with failure. I just need to feel okay with the fact that it happened, or okay with the fact that things weren't "perfect," so that I can let go and be able to learn from it (if there's anything to be taken away) and move on.
So, everyone - join me for an okay 2014!!!
* Side Story: So, after typing that, I remembered something... I was around 7, and my family had just bought a new Nintendo Entertainment System. My parents ran a small business, so would often come home from work really late. I would try to stay up so that I could see them before I went to bed, but sometimes it just didn't happen. It was the middle of the night, and I had gotten up to go to the bathroom. Usually around this time, everyone's already in bed, so the rest of the house would be pitch-dark. This night, though, I noticed a strange glowing light coming from the living room. Just the glow - no sound. I tip-toed carefully down the hall to see what it was, and when I turned the corner...
There was my mom, sitting in the dark in front of the TV, playing Super Mario Bros.
 |
| Ringing in the New Year in Animal Crossing: New Leaf (Nintendo 3DS). |
Yes, that (above) is how I rang in the new year. I lead a sad, sad life... LOL.
My brother gave me a Nintendo 3DS XL for Christmas, along with Animal Crossing: New Leaf (a game from one of my favorite franchises). Needless to say, I've been stuck to this thing ever since.
When I heard that Nintendo was releasing a new Animal Crossing title back in 2012, I had to contain my excitement. Coming upon my mid-30s now, I wanted to try my hand at being a "responsible adult," like how I remember my parents* and other adults in my life being at around that age... Ha!
After spending the last month or so living vicariously through this one guy on YouTube, my brother decided that enough was enough. Thanks to some awesome discounts during this holiday season (by the by, senseless violence and all around bad mojo during Black Friday is meaningless, my friends - it's a fact that similar or even better sales happen closer to Christmastime), he was able to buy the game and a game system for both himself and me.
So there ↑ I am, after politely turning down a few invitations (sorry, guys), celebrating #HNY2014... I mean, I make it sound bad, but really - so what? It ended up being a nice, quiet night in with my mom and my brother (who also happened to be celebrating the new year in his own Animal Crossing town) - what's wrong with that?
Which brings me to my one and only resolution for the new year: to be okay with things. In past years, I would've been calling and texting everyone, trying to fish for any information regarding New Year's Eve events. And if I didn't get the "right" invite, I would feel like I was being left out or missing out, and I would stew over it. And not just New Year's Eve, but with other things in life, too.
Being competitive and goal-oriented is one thing, but you shouldn't spend all of your energy putting yourself down when things don't turn out the way you had imagined. For those of you with a similar type of personality, I'm sure you've noticed (or will at some point) how tiring and draining it is to do that to yourself. It's like having someone (a boss, a parent, a sibling, a partner) nagging in your ear nonstop, 24/7. After enduring that, you have little to no energy or desire to get back up and try again.
I've decided that I've had enough with that kind of behavior - I'm going to start being okay with things. Don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to be satisfied with failure. I just need to feel okay with the fact that it happened, or okay with the fact that things weren't "perfect," so that I can let go and be able to learn from it (if there's anything to be taken away) and move on.
So, everyone - join me for an okay 2014!!!
* Side Story: So, after typing that, I remembered something... I was around 7, and my family had just bought a new Nintendo Entertainment System. My parents ran a small business, so would often come home from work really late. I would try to stay up so that I could see them before I went to bed, but sometimes it just didn't happen. It was the middle of the night, and I had gotten up to go to the bathroom. Usually around this time, everyone's already in bed, so the rest of the house would be pitch-dark. This night, though, I noticed a strange glowing light coming from the living room. Just the glow - no sound. I tip-toed carefully down the hall to see what it was, and when I turned the corner...
There was my mom, sitting in the dark in front of the TV, playing Super Mario Bros.
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