Time suck

I am aware that letting this site just flutter in the wind like this is unacceptable, but the last week has been more busy than maybe any other week of my college career. Most of it good stuff, but still. This is the first I’ve been in my apartment today.

On a related note I don’t have anything to post right now because I didn’t actually have any food until today. Surviving on hot dogs and peanut butter for three days is not fun. Anyway, this quarter is going to be very busy. I am working out my schedule, so once again I have not forgotten you. I am just bogged down. More to come.

Tags: College, Personal, Time

Problems abound

Well, if it isn’t one thing it’s another. I had my update ready fro today but my card reader doesn’t seem to be working, meaning my pictures are trapped on my camera. I’ve been fiddling with it for a few hours with no luck. I’ll keep working on it. Today’s post will go up whenever I can get the pictures off, be that later today or tomorrow.

Last week was spring break. I did get some work done on the site, but I also focused mostly on visiting family and friends. I got to see my grandpa for the first time in a few months, which was nice. I still can’t quite find what I’m looking for to replace the food page, but I’m close. Ideally I will be able to update the front page and have every other page update automatically. More to come on that, so please just bear with me while I try to get this all figured out.

Today was the first day of fall quarter as well, so I need to determine when I can actually post updates during the day.

Tags: Personal, Time, Web

Finals week and onward

Well, pictures are still more or less broken. I know what’s wrong, I just haven’t had the time to fix it.

I’m going to just wait it out until after finals week is over. That means no update today or Friday. However, by the end of Spring Break I will have the site completely fixed up, including the food tab.

Updates lined up:

• Latkes (potato pancakes).
• Pudding injected, glazed banana muffins.
• Biscuits.

I promise I haven’t forgotten you Internet, it’s just that I accidentally broke the site during maybe the worst possible week.

Tags: College, Personal, Web

Internships and web design

This site has only been up and running for a couple of months now, but I am thinking about doing some pretty hefty modifications. I want to change the way posts show up on the main page, I think. I want to shave the first few paragraphs or so show up with a picture. Clicking the headline would take the reader to the full news post.

My reasoning is actually pretty simple; I want to put recipes in the news posts. Problem is…they’re pretty long. It occured to me when talking to my dad a week or so ago that the recipes are not exactly visible. He actually had never clicked on the food tab, so he missed the galleries and recipes. I feel like I need to get the galleries and recipes in the news posts, but I certainly can’t do that with the whole story being displayed on the front page. Too busy.

I also need to do something with the Food page. The placeholder page that is there right now is simply not going to cut it. I need something cleaner. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know. There will be an update tomorrow. Probably corndogs.

On a mostly unrelated note, I’m in the process of applying for internships for Online Journalism. I’m going to be sending a few applications toward the East Coast around the D.C. area. If you have any suggestions I’m all ears eyes.

Tags: College, Personal, Web

Time managment (analog style)

I like the Internet. A lot. Technology and I get along well most of the time. I built my current computer, I get all of my news through RSS feeds, and synchronization gets me excited. It seems obvious then that I would use some sort of digital planner. Not anymore.

At the beginning of Fall quarter I tried a number of different daily planning methods. I used the recently-shutdown iwantsandy.com for a while as well as Remember the Milk. They were both services that I enjoyed, but in the end they just fell short.

It took me a few weeks, but the problem finally dawned on me. I don’t consider my phone an organization device. Shocking, I know. When I had to remember something I was more likely to jot it down in the corner of a notebook than send off a text message. Once I got the revelations out of the way the next logical step was to find something pen and paper based that would work as my external short term memory.

Daily planners at the bookstores were not so much expensive as they were clunky. The benefit of using my phone was that it is small. If fits in my pocket and leaves room for whatever else I’m carrying. Don’t get me wrong; a nice moleskin notebook would be wonderful, but smaller is better.

I eventually stumbled upon PocketMod. The idea is fairly simple. A single piece of paper is cut and folded in such as way that is creates an eight page booklet, front and back included. The entire folded PocketMod is about the size of my wallet and thinner than a credit card. I can slip it into my back pocket and not notice it.

I print out a new one every two weeks and use almost no ink and only one page of paper.

The best feature of the PocketMod — the feature that led me to actually try it out — is the Web site. It presents a wonderful, flash based page that allows you to drap and drop pages to be printed. The whole thing, front page included, is customizable. I flirted with a few layouts, but settled on a two week planner face to face, a month calender, a finance and shopping list, two lined sheets and the cover.

Since I started using my PocketMod on a regular basis I have been extremely pleased. I am a big fan of technology, don’t get my wrong, but sometimes a pen and paper just does it better.

Tags: College, Personal

Sometimes Ease trumps Creativity

Sometimes a full meal takes too long

Four days a week, Monday through Thursday, Jake and I go to the gym at 9 a.m. to lift weights. We have been doing it long enough now that it has become habit. The day doesn’t quite feel right if I miss a day. When I get back at 10 a.m. I generally check the news and some other RSS feeds while eating breakfast and then take a shower.

The past few weeks I have been eating instant oatmeal almost every morning. It’s fairly quick and tasty, but no matter what you add to something like oatmeal it’s going to get boring after a while. Today instead of a bowl of cereal or some oatmeal I had a single large orange. Citrus fruits are some of my personal favorites. I have a bag of maybe 8 oranges in my refrigerator right now, and I am certain that I will eat all of them before they go bad. The bananas, however, will be going to some banana bread later tonight.

Anyway, there is a benefit to keeping breakfast simple. When I make oatmeal I have to keep an eye on how much of anything I’m using and how long it goes in the microwave. Considering I bake bread and make dishes that have to stew for hours, you would think that a few minutes of work every day would not bother me. I think it’s the repetition. I just wanted something different. Something easier. Fruit is perfect.

Now, I am certain that there are plenty of people out there who do not believe that oranges are easy. They are probably the same people who scape off all of the pith. (The white stuff.) The pith is good for you, stop doing that. It has fiber. Anyway, a good sized fruit such as an apple or an orange is plenty filling. I can go until lunch easy with an orange.

Granted, there are easier fruits to deal with. Bananas and apples are about as easy as it gets when it comes to fruit. Incidentally, I am also opposed to peeling the skin off of apples, pesticides be damned. Wash them. If I had remembered to buy any, this post would probably be about grapefruit. Another of my personal favorite breakfast fruits.

I will still be eating oatmeal and cereal most days, but sometimes a good piece of fruit is plenty.

Tags: Breakfast, College, Food, Personal, Time

Rolling

Hey Internet, it is blog time. I have been fiddling with this particular web space for a while now. Unfortunately I also developed a nasty habit of accidentally deleting most of the content whole-sale while messing around with the code. I will do my very best to not do that anymore.

My name is Jeremy. Jeremy or Jay is just fine. I’m a 20 year old Online Journalism / Public Advocacy Communication double major at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. I spent a number of years in the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) and made it all the way to Eagle Scout. Most of my hobbies are based around things I learned to do in my time as a scout. The rest of them have been inspired by the Internet and being jealous of other people and their hobbies.  I am not sure how often this blog will be updated, though I will attempt to keep things regular.

In other news, I finally have some direction for BeanHat. In recent months I have developed a taste for bread making. In fact, a just bought a dough hook to go with my shiny new Kitchen Aid mixer. (The mixer was a gift. I am a poor college student.) The focus of this blog will be cooking. Probably baking to be more specific. An important note before we get started though; I am a hobbyist. I don’t really know what I am doing, but that seems like a silly reason to not do something. The lovely picture of what amounts to a hamburger bun off to the left is the result of my first attempt to make sourdough bread. I entered it into the “Hungry Scientist” contest over at Instructables, which netted me second prize. Expect an entry about that soon.

I expect that I will be uploading pictures of the breads I have made in the past and detailing my experiences. I will probably be doing any number of other food related things with this blog as well. I have made red beans and rice, gumbo and Chicken Parmesan in the past few months. Those will probably make appearances soon enough. For now though I will be outlining who I am, what I do and what to expect. Before I finish this post off and go about filling in the obliquity “About me…” page I will lay out what I will and will not be doing.

I will: be blogging my opinions and experiences. Any posts or images that appear on this blog are created and owned by, of course, me. Unless otherwise noted. I will be blogging about whatever comes to mind and doing so as honestly as I can afford. Any time I make an edit I will make note of it in the modified post. Comments, constructive criticism, money and food are certainly appreciated.

I will not: be doing anything that would compromise my integrity as a journalist. While this is a personal, informal blog, I am still (being) trained as a journalist. As such I do have a code of conduct that I will be following. No personal attacks, no unfounded rumors and no stealing or plagiarizing. I also do not expect anything out of this blog beyond my own personal gratification.

Most of this will be showing up in the “About Me” page soon enough.

Tags: Bread, Food, Personal