Fearless Felix

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On October 14th, 2012, “Fearless” Felix Baumgartner, an Austrian dare-devil BASE jumper, and skydiver captured the world’s attention on Sunday with his 24 mile space jump. He set the record for highest-jump and fastest free fall velocity when he became the first person to break the sound barrier without the aid of a jet or spacecraft. Thats over 768 mph at 70 degrees F. It’s estimated the he traveled at speeds of up to 834 mph. Though it was a great feat for man, it gave a monumental level of attention to the stunt’s sponsor, Red Bull, which garnered “tens of millions of dollars of exposure” for the energy drink brand. As for Baumgartner, he achieved a worldwide level of fame for the feat, but that is unlikely to lead to any riches. And despite being one of the most in-demand interviewees in the world right now, the man who fell to Earth is putting off media requests for the time being, opting instead for rest. Who could blame him?

Beer

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So, I just starting making my own beer. Brewing your own beer is damn easy, and relatively inexpensive. I’ve decided to share my methods.

Clean the crap out of everything that is going to come in contact with your beer. SANITIZE everything that will come in contact with the beer after the boil. Germs can cause some rather awful tasting beer (so I’ve heard). Do not use a scrubber that will scratch the surface — pathogens love to grow in the grooves left behind, and are almost impossible to sanitize. Rinse well, then soak briefly in a bleach or iodine solution. Rinse off bleach before using items using very clean potable or distilled water.
Put your special grains into a grain bag (a mesh bag to contain the grains – like a tea bag, only a lot bigger) and steep them in the large pot in three gallons of hot water around 150 degrees for about 30 minutes. Remove the grains and allow the water to drip out of the grain bag. Do not squeeze the bag, because you may extract tannins that will give your beer an astringent flavor. Add the malt extract and bring everything to a boil. This is some really sludgy stuff, so you may want a large sanitized spoon to help scoop it out. The hops are usually added at various intervals to add flavor, bitterness, or aroma and the times are spelled out for you in the kit’s instructions for your style of beer. In general, hops added early in the boil will contribute more bitterness, but at the expense of flavor and aroma. Hops added at the end of the boil will have a more pronounced flavor and aroma, but will not contribute significantly to the bitterness of the beer. After you have boiled the liquid (called wort – pronounced wert), you need to cool it as quickly as possible. The easiest way is to put the whole pot in a bathtub that is full of ice and water. Once it’s around 80 deg you are ready to transfer it to the fermenter (a big plastic special bucket). Pour the cooled wort into your fermenter. And thats as far as I’ve gotten. I’m really excited about this, but having to wait stinks. I feel like a little kid, counting the days until christmas.

I’m internet famous

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well, sort of. Yesterday, my girlfriend and I posted photos of my friend Patricks recent journey across the country to the social news website, Reddit. The post went something like “So my friend decided to go on a road trip completely alone. He returned, 100 days and 10,000 miles later with these photos..” For those of us unfamiliar, Reddit is a social news website where the registered users submit content, in the form of either a link or a text “self” post. Users then vote the submission “up” or “down”, which is used to rank the post and determine its position on the sites pages. Each submission has to be assigned to a “subreddit”. There is a “subreddit” for pretty much any topic you can think of, e.g. r/pics, r/food, r/politics, r/programming, r/skyrim. The more upvotes you get, the longer your post stays at the top of the subreddit. But there is also the “front page” of reddit which is the “homepage” for anyone that types in www.reddit.com. The front page is an accumulation of all the submissions users have deemed worthy of the front page. Note* IT IS EXTREMELY DIFFICULT TO GET ON THE FRONT PAGE

so yeah, we make this post to r/pics (since it involved the photos my friend took on his journey) at around 4pm yesterday. While I’m in my 5 o’clock class I get a text from my girlfriend, “17 upvotes so far:)”. I was thrilled. We’ve posted quite a few things and barely get 1 or 2 upvotes. Not more than a few more minutes pass by and I get another text “holy shit, 150 now!”. If you could’ve seen the grin on my face. Then another “310!”. The thing with these posts are that once enough people “upvote”, the growth is exponential. I quickly rushed home so that we could sit in front of the computer and watch the votes and comments come in. It seriously feels like winning the lottery. Cha-ching cha-ching cha-ching. Before you knew it, we were not only the top post of r/pics, we had made it to the front page. THE FRONT F* PAGE! Never did I think we’d be on the front page. The rest of the story gets a little convoluted as we invited some friends over to celebrate our 5 seconds of fame.

24 hrs later my friend Patricks pictures have been viewed by over 345,670 people and counting all thanks to the community of Reddit.

Samsung is suing Apple over LTE

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Just when you thought the whole “let’s take each other to court” thing was fading out in the tech world, Samsung confirmed that it plans to sue Apple over eight patents relating to its implementation of LTE technology in the iPhone. Frak. Samsung states that it “anticipates that it will file, in the near future, a motion to amend its infringement contentions to add the iPhone 5 as an accused product. On September 12, 2012, Apple announced that it will release the iPhone 5 on September 21, 2012. Based on information currently available, Samsung expects that the iPhone 5 will infringe the asserted Samsung patents-in-suit in the same way as the other accused iPhone models. Samsung plans to file a motion to amend its infringement contentions to address the iPhone 5 as soon as it has had a reasonable opportunity to analyze the device. Because Samsung believes the accused functionality of the iPhone 5 will be similar to the accused functionality of other accused Apple products, Samsung does not believe that amendment of its infringement contentions should affect the case schedule.”
You really can’t blame Samsung though after Apple decided to go thermonuclear on their ass since it couldn’t on Google. It’s like this, if you had a neighbor who tried to sue the pants off of you and take your house, your cars, and kids toys, you certainly wouldn’t bend over, take it, and then walk across the lawn to be neighborly the next day. Personally, I hope this karma bites Apple (no pun intended) where it hurts.

Chances are I’ll still get the iPhone 5. sigh.

Film mocking Muhammad sparks violence, worldwide anger among Muslims

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The half-way funny, independent film was allegedly produced and directed by Sam Bacile, a 56 year-old Israeli-American real estate developer. According to Ynet, Bacile said he raised $5 million from about 100 Jewish donors, whom he declined to identify. On the eleventh anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, controversial pastor Terry Jones* released a video promoting the film, which portrays the Prophet in what he described as a “satirical” manner.
The US ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed when local militia assaulted Washington’s consulate in Benghazi. President Barack Obama has condemned the attack. Reports from various sources paint an unclear picture of the circumstances surrounding Ambassador John Christopher Steven’s death. It is widely believed that a group of extremist militia members stormed Benghazi’s US consulate on Tuesday night. Stevens may not have been killed in the Tuesday night assault, however, but rather when a second mob attacked his motorcade as it was leaving Benghazi Wednesday morning.

What most people don’t know is up to 10 Libyan security personnel were also killed or wounded in the violence. “Libyan security personnel fought back alongside Americans. Libyans helped some of the diplomats find safety and carried Ambassador Stevens’s body to the hospital where we tragically learned that he had died,” said President Obama.

WHY DO PEOPLE GET SO WORKED UP OVER RELIGION? WHEN WILL THE REALIZE THAT IT IS ALL BULLSHIT. A HOAX. MAGIC.

JUST BE GOOD TO ONE ANOTHER FOR FUCKS (humanities) SAKE. WE ARE ALL HUMANS. I CAN’T WAIT UNTIL AN ALIEN INVASION– MAYBE THEN WE WILL UNITE AS ONE. …until then, keep killing in the name of (your god(s) here)

*This lunatic gained international attention in 2010 with his plan to burn Qur’ans.

your voice, your vote

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As I’m watching the democratic convention, I can’t help but to think about President Obama’s speech writer, Jon Favreau. Yeah, Obama is great at delivering heart-touching, “truthful” speeches, but know this America, he didn’t write it–merely approved it. That’s not to say delivering a speech does not come with great difficulty, because it does. I can barely keep from passing out when talking in front of my peers in a small classroom setting, while this guy does it almost flawlessly in front of a crowd twenty thousand strong. Not including the millions of tv/online viewers. That’s a lot of pressure. But, what kind of pressure do you think lies with the person responsible for the words the president will say? What I found most interesting about Mr Favreau is that he’s been Barack’s speechwriter since he was first elected to the senate. It leads me to believe that Jon Favreau is a huge part of the reason why Obama is the president. I know it sounds far fetched, but I mean c’mon, this guy writes the stuff that people eat out of the palm of Barack’s hand. Back in 2008, most of what the general public knew about presidential hopeful Obama were the words that another man wrote. Kudos to you Jon Favreau.