Yearly Archives: 2015

A lot of people have asked what music I listen to while I do my walks, so I thought I’d put it up on Apple Music. The songs were chosen to keep up a good walking pace—each of the songs makes me want to sing or play air guitar while I’m walking. I hope you enjoy it.

Jim’s Walk playlist on Apple Music.

The other night, I checked out the “New” section of Apple Music. Like usual, I switched to the Metal section—when it loaded, I thought for sure someone at Apple was punching me. To be clear, I’m not saying this is a problem, I thought it was funny as hell. I closed the app, reopened and everything was fine. Still funny.

Have you ever slept on a buckwheat pillow? It’s kind of like a beanbag for your head. The hull fill supports your head and neck in a way that can’t be matched by traditional pillows.

Hullo’s features include:

• Quality construction & organic materials
• Breathable fill that provides cool comfort all night long. No more flipping to the cool side in the middle of the night!
• American-made craftsmanship
• Free shipping
• 60-night money-back guarantee

Drop what you’re doing—go and check out Hullo. Try it for 60 nights. If it’s not your favorite pillow, return it for a refund. You can’t lose!

NASA:

If you go outside at (a particular) time on a clear day, the world around you will be as bright as the surface of Pluto at noon.

It’s always Pluto Time somewhere, and NASA wants to see your view. New Horizons will become the first spacecraft to have a close encounter with Pluto. After the historic flyby on July 14, 2015, we’ll combine as many submitted images as we can into a mosaic image of Pluto and its moons.

Here in Chilliwack, BC, my “Pluto Time” is tonight at 9:20 PM PDT. I’ll definitely be outside taking a picture for NASA.

As I continue on my weight loss journey with Apple Watch, one thing people kept telling me is to stay hydrated. I thought I was, but when a friend recommended I try “AddWater”, I saw how much more I needed to drink. This is now part of my daily logging. It’s really simple and tracks all of your drinks, not just water.

Future Sonics are the absolute best in the industry. They are the first and original Ear Monitor (and own the trademark) and I company I trust with my hearing—and to deliver quality sound. I’ll have more details later, but I’m heading out for my first walk with these.

Many thanks to Designer News for sponsoring The Loop this week. A new and exciting website has recently been launched for web designers and developers.

You likely spend hours every morning browsing through hundreds of posts on your RSS feeds, hoping to stumble across relevant stories. Designer News was built to provide web designers and developers with a single location to discover the latest and most significant stories on the Web.

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With frequent updates throughout the day, you’ll always find something interesting and fun to read.

Click here to visit the Designer News website and subscribe to the newsletter for the latest stories of the day.

Digg:

This Saturday, July 4, The Tour de France starts. And you should watch it.

Granted, out of all the sports, professional cycling is, by far, the most impenetrable to outsiders. There are so many questions: Why do they all ride together in a group? Why doesn’t just one guy jump ahead and leave everyone behind? If there’s only one winner, why are there teams? What’s with the different jersey colors? Aren’t all of these guys on steroids? All understandable!

But read this humble primer to cycling’s most prestigious — and most grueling — race, and we promise that you will relish waking up at 8 am to watch a bunch of men in spandex ride bikes through the French countryside.

I love this race. The spectacle, the scenery, the drama, the controversies, all add up to a month of great viewing. I wouldn’t ride a bicycle if you paid me and the sport is, like boxing and The World Cup, tarnished (almost) beyond redemption but I’ll still watch every second of it.

Politico:

“The hot-dog contest is a physical manifestation of the concept of freedom,” said George Shea, the mastermind behind the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island. “The contest has come to represent the spirit of July 4th itself. That is why people go to the event. It is kind of a pilgrimage to the center of July 4th and the center of freedom.”

More than 30,000 fans of the absurd will pack the corner of Surf and Stillwell Avenues to watch the annual feeding frenzy—the Super Bowl of eating contests.

I love America but I don’t understand the fascination with competitive eating in general and certainly not with this particular event. It’s actually been broadcast on ESPN. If this is the “spirit of July 4th”, I fear for that spirit.

AT&T:

When you see the driver next to you looking at their phone, it’s no longer safe to assume they’re texting. New research1 from AT&T* shows nearly 4-in-10 smartphone users tap into social media while driving. Almost 3-in-10 surf the net. And surprisingly, 1-in-10 video chat.

7-in-10 people engage in smartphone activities while driving. Texting and emailing are still the most prevalent. But other smartphone activity use behind the wheel is now common. Among social platforms, Facebook tops the list, with more than a quarter of those polled using the app while driving.

As a motorcyclist, this survey is not only disturbing but, sadly, not surprising. There’s not a day goes by I don’t see someone more focused on their phone than on their driving. There’s also generally not a day that goes by where I don’t have to take some kind of evasive action to avoid an accident with a distracted driver. Please, as AT&T is campaigning, “It Can Wait”.

Ars Technica:

By this point, fairy-tales about successful funding and horror stories of projects that end in abject failure or corruption have led most of us to recognize the volatility of any Kickstarter project. But lost between these two extremes is a long, sometimes confusing road that is invisible, and sometimes even inaccessible, to the mildly interested passersby. In today’s Kickstarter Web storefronts, projects appear so singular to their backers that any unplanned activity can seem more erratic and suspicious than it actually is. In most cases, though, delays are normal.

This underreported grey area between funded and shipped (or sailed) isn’t necessarily something to loathe. Rather, it highlights many of the reasons crowdfunding is worth protecting—even if some of the practice’s worst contradictory forces are at play.

I’ve backed several Kickstarter projects over the last few years and have been universally disappointed for various reasons, not the least of which is failure to ship. I won’t be doing any more.

Good find by Federico Viticci.

Quartz:

It is broadcast 24 hours a day, with real people picking songs, introducing them, and conducting interviews. Everyone around the globe hears the same thing at the same time—a rarity for internet-based media, which is rarely experienced in sync. As a result, everyone can also discuss in real-time.

It’s early, but tuning into Beats 1 on launch day and following along with other listeners on Twitter made it a fun, memorable, shared experience.

It’s hard to argue with the sentiment. Sure, some (many) don’t like the mix – “there’s too much ____ (insert music genre you dislike the most here)” but I’ve been listening to nothing but Beats 1 since the launch. The shared music aspect of it is really appealing to me. For the most part, I like the DJs. I especially like Julie Adenuga and her drum and bass mix. Sure, there are glitches and odd bits (the naughty language edits are particularly annoying) but, after only three days, it’s a remarkable achievement that will only get better, in my opinion.

I use the “Like” system in my music services all the time because I want it to learn from my listening habits and be more personalized for my tastes. However, it seems that every service uses this system in different ways, so I talked to Apple about how you should use likes with Apple Music. […]