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How To: The Best Bacon Ever

Recently, I’ve been seeing this commercial (I can’t remember for what) that starts out, “I can’t get a job because I don’t have any skills.” Or something to that extent.

This commercial got me thinking, though: how important is it for us, as individuals, to be good at something? Better yet, to be an expert. In his book, Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell claims that to be an expert at something you must spend 10,000 hours working at or practicing it.* What right do we have to declare ourselves as experts at something? I have no idea but I would love to have this discussion with somebody – my contact information is somewhere on this blog.

I do not feel comfortable declaring myself an expert at anything (this is because of my age and experience among other variables). However, make damn good bacon and what follows is my recipe. 

Note: This method of making dank bacon is best if you like your bacon crispy but still somewhat chewy.

The Best Bacon Ever:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cover a baking sheet with tin foil. I suppose you don’t have to do this but it makes clean-up a little easier. Don’t do this if you’re into reducing your “carbon footprint.”
3. Put bacon on sheet with approximately 1/4 to 1/2 inch between each slice.
4. “Bake” the bacon (har har) for 7 to 9 minutes before flipping. This depends on your oven and preheat time.
5. After 3 to 5 minutes, remove the bacon. The trick is to take it out BEFORE it looks super crispy – this way it’ll be chewy.
6. Optional: Pour the grease into a jar to save for frying purposes later on or throw it out. DO NOT pour it down the drain; it’s bad for the well-being of your plumbing.
7. Blot the extra grease off your bacon and enjoy!

While it does take longer than conventional frying, this bacon is truly awesome. I can provide testimonials if you doubt me. You’re welcome!

*I have not read Outliers but this is what I have been told. I’ve also been told that it’s a great book but it would be unfair to you if I recommend it before having it read it.

April 20, 2010: The Boulder Holidaze

BOULDER, CO —

There’s thirty minutes ’till lift off and I’ve already almost lost sight of the mountains; I’m a 420 virgin (in Boulder, anyways). I had heard much about what was to come but I remained skeptical. It wasn’t until @tomalom2 showed me this video. So, as we meander through nearly 15,000 people, all I can think is, “big Bob Marly blunts.”

In Boulder, April 20 is no ordinary holiday – it’s a holidaze. Each year the event’s attendance increases, and yesterday’s gathering may be one of the largest pro-marijuana protests to date. At the time I’m writing this, it is still unknown but many have estimated that 15,000 to 20,000 enthusiasts showed up to protest on The University of Colorado at Boulder’s Norlin Quad. 

When I noticed the hype brewing on Monday, I decided that I would live-tweet the entire event. (Of course, retrospectively, I wish I had created a #hashtag so that I could reference my tweets in this post. Oh, well.) You can search for my tweets in #420 and #Boulder or view my timeline. 

The entire day was cloudy and borderline-cold but the weather was completely independent from the incredible number of people that began congregating late morning. Even spurts of rain at the “one-hour” mark did not deter enthusiasm. I could tell that the ensuing hours would be awesome when a plane pulling an advertisement that read, “Happy 4/20 – Color the World – Buy 1 Get 1,” started circling the CU campus several times. 

I imagine that one would not prefer to commute through Boulder on April 20. Pedestrians already have the right-of-way throughout Boulder as it is, and April 20 is certainly no exception. 

The question of whether or not the event is a protest depends. Boulder is known to have a large, genuine earth-loving demographic. The gathering is not just a bunch of pot-smoking college students that have found ways of easily obtaining medicinal marijuana cards – although, both of these are true. Interestingly, and not particularly surprisingly, adults made up a large percentage of the participants. 4/20 also brought out the diversity in Boulder. (After spending the majority of my life on the East coast, I am not able to describe Boulder, Colorado as diverse.) The annual event has begun to take on a sort of Mecca-vibe. In @duzer‘s 2009 video post on elephantjournal.com, an awesome semi-satirical news report of the 4/20 Boulder event, many of the interviewed participants expressed their tenure in partaking in the protest (one guy claimed 2009 as his 9th year partaking). 

With about an hour left to go, the clouds dispersed and I overheard, “the marijuana gods [had] spoken, mon.” At 4:20 pm, the brewing cloud of smoke intensified and then rose upward. I can not stress enough the density of the smoke cloud. At one point it was nearly impossible to see the opposite side of the quad. People hung out of windows on some of the surrounding buildings and captured images that I look forward to seeing in the morning still, unfortunately, have not seen. (Which leads me to ask, where are the aerial photos?) The 4/20 gathering was a community brought together by one shared interest. It demonstrated that a lot of pot-smoking in one concentrated area is not necessarily dangerous. But as soon as the cheers died down, the coughing resonated–and believe me, it res-o-nat-ed–and minutes later, the crowd dissipated.

However, despite the overwhelming good nature, media reactions and responses were generally negative. Most of the news that I’ve read so far has credited the police for their tolerance and help controlling the crowds – this is fine but as far as I can tell, unnecessary. As of now, there has been little national coverage. Stephen Colbert mentioned the “holiday,” but said nothing of the university. Nothing surprised me about the number of police nor their actions. It has been said that there were citations given out.  There is no doubt that local businesses, such as Cheba Hut (@ChebaHutBoulder) and Boulder Baked (@BoulderBaked), that capitalize on references to marijuana and the increasing MMJ support in Boulder, profited. 

@DosandDontsBlog author, Nathan Year , whom I don’t know personally but assume to be a CU student, posted a copy of CU-Boulder’s Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano’s letter to the CU-Boulder students regarding 4/20 on his blog.* I have italicized important phrases.

While police will be present on the Norlin Quad to support crowd safety,
individuals found using marijuana on their way to or from the 420 gathering,
or in other locations on campus, face a citation from CUPD.

Police were not to cite those using at the gathering. Alcohol was not permitted. 

At the Norlin Quad, no vending of any merchandise or food will be permitted.
No buying and selling of marijuana will be allowed.

While I didn’t see any distribution of marijuana, there were edibles being sold and groups of people giving out free grilled cheese sandwiches. From what I could see, the grilled cheese gods were cited for their charity. (I will never understand police intentions.) Word on the street was that one doctor was selling half-price medicinal marijuana prescriptions. That same letter called for “full cooperation” in carrying out the “unsanctioned event” (which was reiterated numerous times throughout) with “no injuries to individuals and no damage in property.” The Chancellor tried to solicit support against the event by asking students how they wished their university be perceived. I don’t think it bothers anyone. 

I recorded this video of 4:20 pm with my HD Mino Flip camera. Although, it seems that the quality did not translate when I saved it as Web-ready. (I’ll fix it later. Until then, YouTube has many a video.)

I noticed last night that there was an unusually small amount of people walking about – and that’s a lot for being on The Hill. Maybe this was because of the harmless outcomes of the obvious. In the words of Katt Williams, “Hungry, happy, sleepy – those are the effects.”

 

Photos by Tom Poth.

Ryan Van Duzer’s video.

Nathan Year’s Social College Do’s and Don’ts Blog.

Challenge: 7 Days of ONLY Tweeting via SMS

The original idea around Twitter was “to have a dispatch service that connects us on our phones using text.” (140 Characters by @Dom Sagolla) Before API, thats applications programming interface, you could tweet directly through the website or by sending a text message. Now that we ALL have smartphones, we use apps like @TweetDeck and @Echofon – or the desktop clients. Or we tweet from one of the other thousands of 3rd-party applications available. 

But for a short while back when texting meant T9, SMS was the way to tweet. I decided that for one week I would give up tweeting from Twitter.com, Echofon for iPhone, and the TweetDeck desktop client; I was going to tweet via SMS for an entire week. 

Anyone can update their timeline through text message (update Settings > Mobile). And everything you need to know about effectively tweeting via SMS is here. But could it actually be done for 1 week? My daily log is as follows:

Day 1: This is hard. I’m getting a butt load of texts. “Stats” is a nice feature. I hate that I can’t view @replies.

Day 2: Aside from the nearly 50 texts (timeline updates) before 9am (mtn time), this has finally come in handy. I can easily turn “OFF” my notifications and work on my paper.

Day 3: iPhone’s don’t count characters but I’m finally getting a feel for what 100 to 120 characters looks like. It was nice being able to focus on my paper without being distracted every 2 seconds with a text. 

Day 3 (later): I cheated. In retaliation against my paper, I logged onto Twitter.com. #c8fail

Day 4: Still had notifications turned off. Didn’t tweet much today.

Day 5: I KNOW I’M MISSING OUT. Am I addicted to my timeline? Tried RTing more today – you can only RT somebody’s most recent tweet – meh. Having notifications on prevented me from napping.

Day 6: Realizing that I’m not tweeting as much and of value. Missing the inspiration from my timeline?

Day 7: N/A

I cheated on the evening of Day 6. And by cheated, I mean, I gave in. I don’t think this says anything about my dedication in general, but rather, my dedication to Twitter – and that’s a good thing, right? 

Note: There are a few points I’d like to make, whether you determine these as positives or negatives of SMS tweeting, is up to you.

1. SMS tweeting results in a smaller timeline. You have to individually and manually turn on the users that you want notifications from. Pro: staying up-to-date with fewer, and more meaningful, users. Con: missing out on potentially valuable information in your timeline.
2. No trending topics and hashtags. Pro: TT’s – “out of sight, out of mind.” Con: #hashtags can be tweeted but not viewed.
3. No @replies. This really drives me crazy. Pro: less distractions – the only way a user can contact you is through DM. Con: it makes responding to users and conversing with users nearly impossible.

The quote in this article is from 140 Characters: A Style Guide for the Short Form by Dom Sagolla, co-creator of Twitter. (@Dom and @thebook)

3 Needed Tech & Media Updates

I try not to complain (too much) but recently, I can’t help but wonder why developers didn’t include the following (and obvious, in my opinion) features:

1. @replies via SMS: Over the past seven days, I have been experimenting with the original SMS method of tweeting. After a solid week of SMS tweeting, I feel that I have become somewhat proficient. However, there is one flaw: I can not view my @replies and it is driving me nuts! The only way to view @replies is if you chose to follow a user in your SMS timeline and you see that that user has tweeted at you. Other than that, DM is the only way to contact a SMS tweeter. And seriously, who DMs somebody unless you’re into #twitterafterdark. 

2. Exporting Facebook photo albums: So to make up for my lack of time spent on Twitter, Echofon, and TweetDeck this past week, I decided to update my privacy settings on Facebook. Out of my 67 photo albums (when did I get so many??), I chose to keep my travel albums viewable by everyone. Essentially, I’m using Facebook as a storage unit for the other 4,000 pictures from college. So, my frustration is this: I can’t export my Facebook photo albums onto my computer. I’m sure it could be done… one photo at a time. But that’d be a pain in the you-know-where.

3. Automatic sourcing from iBooks to iWork: I didn’t order an iPad because my 2nd generation MacBook still runs perfectly fine. But after playing with it for an hour (I know, I’m a hog) at the Apple store last weekend, I so want one. As a Communications student, I write a lot and I could see the iWork software combined with the iBooks app as being extremely useful. As I was playing around with iBooks, I had an idea: there needs to be automatic sourcing from iBooks to iWork. What I mean is, if I copy a phrase from a book or textbook in iBooks and I paste the selection into my document on iWork, I want my iPad to automatically source the reference in the correct MLA/APA format. Computers do everything else, why can’t they source my papers, too?

Why haven’t the developers addressed these issues? If you know ANY way around these problems, please comment!

@caithaha

I changed my Twitter username to @caithaha. No disrespect to @thefiveone but it’s time to leave @GREYfiveone behind so that I can continue to work on my personal brand.

Pick a color and join the Revalulion at Deuce Day World.

GREY FOREVER

Fetch is King

I haven’t posted in a LONG time. This is because of three things:

1. I am in the process of completing my move to Colorado. This process involves job interviews and driving (my car, stuff, etc) across the country.
2. I have been working on my thesis about the relationship between Twitter and marketing. It’s due tomorrow. This post is a manifestation of my procrastination.
3. Although I probably should have waited this one out, I adopted a dog. He’s a Dachshund/mix (we’re not sure what he’s mixed with so I’ll post some pictures and please comment if you have any ideas), his name is Petey, and he lives to fetch.

 

Petey!

 

Nap time for Petey!

 

Expect more posts soon though. I’m currently experimenting but I won’t tell you about what. OK, Twitter and SMS are involved. THAT’S IT. I need to finish my paper, NOW.

By the way, I’m currently reading Search Engine Optimization For Dummies by Peter Kent right now. If anyone knows any other good links or books about SEO, please comment!

New music by The Five One – Mandatory

Hear more here or join the REVALULION here. Follow @thefiveone on Twitter.

I mean, I’m not saying that you don’t know what you’re talking about, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.

I came across an interesting website the other day. The concept is similar to what Waking Life suggests. FluentDreaming.com is intended to be set as your internet browser’s homepage so each time you load it you ‘check mentally’ if you’re awake or asleep. With the purpose being that when you dream of loading your internet browser (which I do all the time, I’m just sayin’) you’ll also ‘check mentally’ if you’re asleep or not and this will allow you to dream more lucidly. If anyone out there has had any success with this website, a similar website, or a similar technique, please comment so that we can begin an email dialogue.

I’ve learned a lot on lucidity and the website I like the most so far is www.lucidity.com. Definitely watch Waking Life by Richard Linklater is you haven’t before.

It’s getting late so I’ll finish/edit this tomorrow.

I am a GREYMELEON

Sooner or later I’m going to write a tribute to this social networking site because thanks to Twitter, today I came across Tumblr. You can check out my Tumblr page here. Tumblr is micro blogging without the Facebook status qualities of Twitter and looks more like normal blogging. You can easily post text, pictures, quotes, inks, chats, audio, and video and the iPhone application is so simple, easy, and fast. I’ve been playing around with Tumblr all night. 

I’m going to continue to explore this and then update this post accordingly. My eyes hurt from staring at the computer all night so I’m going to finish this post mañana. I’m going to postpone the lucid dreaming post for a while and probably substitute with a post on my weakness: Twitter.

I’ve added some new links. Adios