Shmee.Me

September 24, 2013September 24, 2013

Learning To Live With MyFitnessPal!

I have known that I needed to lose weight for quite some time, but I never had the motivation to do it until I needed to drop a few pounds to go Zip Lining in Kauai. I thought about what diets I might try, but I didn’t want to spend a bunch of money on classes and books, I just wanted to control my eating, so I did what all 21st Century People do, I checked to see if there was an app for that, and low and behold there was. It was MyFitnessPal.

MyFitnessPal is a website that helps you track your caloric intake, but besides the site they have apps for just about every smart phone type out there. Say you want to eat a Subway sandwich, you would just type the sub you got in to the search bar, pick the one with options you got, and add it to the meal you are eating it for. It is that easy, and they have tons of menus and meals in their database, and more people are adding to it all the time, so you can search for just about anything and find it. Plus they have a barcode scanner, so you can just scan your pack of chips you shouldn’t be eating and it pops right up.

When you first start it asks you for your height, weight, weight goal, age, birthdate, gender, and most importantly how much weight you want to lose per week, so that it can setup calorie limits for you. If you go over your limit you get to see by how many calories, and it will also yell at you if you have had too few calories as well, so that you are not getting too aggressive on your diet.

It also tracks your other nutrients, so you can make sure that you are not eating to much sodium and bloating away all your weight loss, or to make sure you are still getting your vitamins. If you really want that ice cream sundae, you can plug in your exercise to add calories to your available daily intake.

MyFitnessPal also has social hooks to make it in to kind of a social network. For me it is a social network of one. I let my wife see and that is it, but it is good to have some accountability.

Like all calorie counters it only works if you use it, and sometimes I kind of look like a jerk when I pull out my phone to see if I have enough calories to eat something, but it is for my greater health. Will it work for you? Probably, and it has definitely worked for me: I have lost 25lbs and counting. Not bad for a free app, so I don’t care if they are selling my info it is more than worth it.

September 23, 2013September 23, 2013

Should You Get A Roku?

My wife and I decided to setup a TV in our bedroom for occasional viewing, and my wife did not want a bunch of cables and boxes lying around, so I used the opportunity to buy a Roku 2 XS. This used to be Roku’s top of the line streamer, but it was replaced by the Roku 3 this year. The Roku 2 XS steams in 1080p, has a wired network port to supplement it wireless, and has a motion remote to enable some video games.

What I like about this box is that it is super small, so it doesn’t get in the way, and even though it includes standard definition cables, you would usually set it up with an HDMI cable. It has most of the streaming channels that you would expect: Netflix, Amazon Prime, Crackle, and many more, but it is missing YouTube which is unfortunate.

I was also recently put off by the fact that my HBO Go will not work on the box because Comcast has decided that it will not allow it. This is hardly Roku’s fault, but I feel that Roku should be leaning on Comcast as much as possible to get this app to work.

The motion controller is passible, and playing Angry Birds on it is pretty much like playing Angry Birds on any other platform, except it is on your TV, so I guess that is cool, but it is not something I would get the Roku for.

If you need a cheap streaming solution, the Roku is perfect for that, and it looks like it is adding new options all the time. If they could get HBO Go to work on Comcast, and add YouTube it would just about perfect, and since the new Roku 3’s are coming out you can find deals on all the Roku 2’s right now, so it is a good time to pick one up.

August 22, 2013August 22, 2013

What To Think About Kickstarter

Kickstarter is a company that was started in 2009 by Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler, and Charles Adler as a way to fund projects. The projects can be anything from video games to car parts. If you need money to build or start something you can always see if Kickstarter will help you out.

The way the funding works is that say I want to create a video game, and I need $500,000 to make it happen. Then I would ask for that and say what my game is about, when it will be done, and whatnot, but I would also have reward tiers, so say you give me $20 then I will give you a copy of the game, or at $35 I will give you the game and a T-Shirt. Some projects like to say that you are investing, but that is not the case. You are giving money to these people so that they can make something you want. I guess as rewards they could give you stock or something, but I am pretty sure that would get Kickstarter in trouble for unregulated stock trading.

Kickstarter has come under fire lately because some high profile projects have collapsed, or been proven to be frauds. Kickstarter does have it in the terms of use that if you cannot create what you said you would that you have to give the money back, but it does not give a timeline, and there is no real enforcement, so there is a bit of buyer beware.

I still feel that Kickstarter is fun and worthwhile, but like with all things in life do it with moderation, and I have put together my tips for using the site.

Don’t Kickstart a project with money you don’t have: It seems obvious but when projects fail it is the biggest complaint that people funded the project with money they didn’t have, now they are getting nothing.

Expect delays: Most of the people on Kickstarter have never run a business or funded a product before, so it can take some time to work things out, but usually they pull it out, just later then they said they would.

Remember that you are pre-ordering not investing: People like to rant and rave when a decision is made that goes counter to what they want, but they aren’t investors, so they should calm down and see how it turns out.

I totally think people should use Kickstarter to help other people accomplish their dreams, but just be careful and look in to what you are Kickstarting.

July 16, 2013

The Best Upgrade for Your Computer is an SSD!

I recently upgraded my computer with an SSD, the Samsung 840 Series MZ-7TD250BW 2.5″ 250GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD), which is the long way of saying a 250GB Samsung SSD. Most computers come with more than enough RAM now, so having a fast hard-drive is next big thing to upgrade.

This is a middle of the road SSD, but it is way faster than a conventional spinning drive, and I can tell that my computer is much faster when loading programs. They are much more expensive than spinning drives, but I think they are worth it, and you can use your Apricorn drive adapter to help you make the swap!

July 15, 2013July 15, 2013

The Apricorn DriveWire USB 2.0 Something Everyone Should Have!

Most people do not have tools for their computers, but I propose everyone should have this one. You might not know from looking at it, but the Apricorn DriveWire USB 2.0 is a universal hard-drive to USB adapter.

The reason you need it is that at some point if you own a computer, of any make or brand, it will die, or the hard-drive will start acting up, and this little dongle will allow you to either hook your old hard-drive up to you new computer or clone you current hard-drive to upgrade painlessly.

If you can use a screw driver and put a CD in to the CD-ROM drive you can make this thing work. I have used it at least a dozen times, and I am sure that I will use it again in the future. Don’t have a CD-ROM anymore? That is okay you can download the software from their website and put it on a USB stick.

These things have got me out of jams more then once, and for the low price of about $35 why would you not get one? Unless you like that thought of loosing all you data on your hard-drive. Here is a link to Amazon for you.