Wana get some chill off-the-billboard-100 indie tracks? or whatever. Hipster Chill

And here are some other people’s lists: Hipster International by Sean Parker, Hipster playlist 2012 by Madeleiné Stamminger, and World Class Hipster by Guillaume Kerbiriou

This is one of our families most used kitchen items.  The $26 Hamilton Beach 40911 2-Quart Electric Iced Tea Maker.  We brew about two pitchers a day on average.

It’s literally this easy to have fresh brewed iced tea:

1. Fill pitcher to line with w water and pour in top
2. Fill pitcher w ice to 2nd line
3. Place one ‘family sized’ tea bag up top
4. Press the one button

It works like a coffee machine, boiling the water and using the water vapor.  This means you end up with distilled water, which removes much of the impurities in tap water.

We use regular Lipton iced tea bags available at any grocery store in the south, or $12 for 144 bags (only $0.08 a pitcher) on amazon.

p.s. You may be able to pour melted sugar in to make ‘southern sweet tea’, but we keep it unsweetened.

What to remove all the voice memos from your iPhone?  The iPhone app doesn’t have a ‘remove all’ option, but it is easy with the help of this little 3rd party app.

1. Install i-FunBox, it is free, legit, and works on PC and Mac
2. Select all the files (not the Sync folder) in the Voice Memos section (click the first item, hold down shift, click the last item), then right-click an item and choose “Delete” (see this screenshot)
3. Close and restart the Voice Memo app
4. In iTunes, there is a “Voice Memos” playlist.  Similarly, select all items in there right-click, and “Delete”

There are a lot of posts out there with people asking.  I just removed over 1,600 voice memos recorded over the last year with this technique.  It’s been bugging my for two years.  The iPhone user’s guide says you can just delete the items from the iTunes Voice Memos playlist, sync, and they’ll be removed from the iPhone, but that never worked for me.  Hope it helps, cheers.

These are a great little pair of Bluetooth headphones for only $30 (when this was posted) with like 4.5 stars w over 2,100 reviews on amazon.  They fold up nicely, have good battery life, decent volume and bass response, good noise cancelling phone mic, support A2DP and headset profiles, are easy to control with one main button plus +/- volume and next/previous track buttons.  Not the highest fidelity of course, but of the half-dozen pairs of bluetooth headphones/buds I’ve purchased (from $200 on down), they’re my favorite for the value for the dollar.

(one last time, don’t expect Beats Audio, Bose QuiteComfort, or wired Sennheiser quality audio, but they do sound good and for $30 wireless headphones they’re a great deal)

What a fantastic kids cartoon!  This is by far our family favorite to watch together.  Every few nights I watch an episode with the kids before bed.  Here are some of the qualities of the show that jump out at me.  Not many cartoons I can think of that hit on these positive attributes:

• Intelligent: the characters think through issues
• Positive Attitude: the main characters keep an up-beat, positive, can-do outlook in life
• Respectful: the characters all are respectful of their parents, and other kids
• Encouraging Creativity: they’re always proactively making amazing stuff (it’s the ‘maker generation’s’ cartoon)
• Teamwork: the kids work together, even the bully, nerd, girls, etc
• Musical: every few episodes has a musical number, which is actually witty and entertaining
• Sub-plots: each episode has the pet secret agent detective platypus Perry ‘Agent P’ take on the ‘evil’ Dr. Doofenshmirtz keeps the show fast.  Inline with the above points, even those rival characters are occasionally helping each other out

Watch online via Netflix or disney.com. And don’t take just my word for it, see what Wired Magazine had to say.  It’s #DadApproved by me.  If you’re a parent and haven’t seen this yet, check it out.

p.s. The cartoon creators themselves have the philosophy that a kids cartoon can be uplifting, have positive values, and still be entertaining.  Contrast that with SpongeBob Square pants, while entertaining, its creators firmly believe cartoons can’t be educational and entertaining at the same time, and must be stupid and nonsensical to be enjoyed. <I’ve seen both creators talk about their shows on TV interviews, need to find videos online and link here>

Got multiple sound sources at your computer desk?  Like laptop, mobile phone, other music player, desktop, etc?  Use desktop speakers and/or headphones?  This is a great little mixer for the desk, I use one at home and one at the office.

See at Behringer Website, or reviews and price on Amazon

• Pictures from a developer’s life
• Being a female software engineer

Playlists of some of my fav entertaining videos:

• music vids
• humor music vids
• comedy skits

World of Warcraft, what my friends think I do…

These are great kits to introduce little ones to electronics.  They use regular ‘pant snaps’ to connect, much easier than the old spring wire connectors.  My 4-yr old loves doing these w Dad.  They’re good for small hands and quick to put together.

Here are the main kits, but there are many more…

Snap Circuits Jr SC-100, $21, what we started with to make sure my boy would be interested, a good starting place for a low price

Snap Circuits SC-300, $45, the medium sized kit

Snap Circuits SC-750, $79, the mac-daddy w computer interface and some more significant modules