Russ

My First Beer Label

 in Homebrew / Puppy / Tech  tagged beer / graphicdesign / Homebrew / IPA / label / photoshop / snagit by

And my realization that I SUCK at photoshop….

I decided to call my latest batch of homebrew Rosie IPA (in honor of the Puppy’s first christmas) and I had an idea for a label in mind.  After stumbling and bumbling through the wealth of photoshop tutorials I realized that I SUCK AT PHOTOSHOP.  Actually, let me clarify, I suck and graphic designing in Photoshop.  I can rock Bridge + Camera Raw for photo editing, but when it comes to graphics and text and layouts and layers I SUCK.  It took me an hour to figure out how to draw a rectangle that fit across the top third of the canvas!!

Anyway, I stumbled through it and I’m actually pretty happy with the result:

The crazy thing is that I think I can do all of this even easier in the simplified editor that comes with Snagit!

Minor Productivity Tips with QuickSilver

 in Uncategorized by

I love QuickSilver on my mac.  When I have to get a new mac, Quicksilver will be the first application I install.  I know there are a TON of sites that have great Quicksilver tips and tricks, but I wanted to take a few minutes and show some of the shortcuts I use everyday.

1.  Bookmarks for QS

I love the fact that Quicksilver indexes my internet browser’s bookmarks.  99% of the time I open my favorite web pages through Quicksilver.  Example: ctrl+space > “min” > Mint.com is opened in Safari.

Also, when I land on a site that I want to come back to but I don’t necessarily want to clutter up the bookmarks bar, I’ll bookmark the site and dump it into the “Bookmarks for QS” folder.  That way I can easily get back without having to drill through tons of folders or browser history to remember where I was.

2.  Google search from QS

Love this one but I can’t take credit for figuring it out.  See Setting up a Google web search Trigger for instructions.

3.  Opening a folder for developing in TextMate

ctrl+space > navigate to the desired folder > tab > open with > textmate.  And it opens the folder in TextMate as a project.  Here’s a little attempt at a screen cast I made while playing with Camtasia.

Chili, Baking and Homebrew

 in Friends / Homebrew  tagged baking / cooking / Homebrew by

Today was a wonderful saturday.  The weather was gorgeous, I didn’t have any commitments, I had a batch of beer to brew, AND, to top things off, Jason came over with all the ingredients for homemade chili.  He had a hankering and I wasn’t going to let an offer like this pass me by.

As I worked on brewing my Chinook IPA, Jason made up some fantastic chili.  Then Jen got home and decided to whip up some Tastefully Simple Beer Bread.

(more…)

Chinook IPA

 in Homebrew  tagged Homebrew / IPA by

Aiming for:

Hoppy American IPA.  Kit link

Yeast:

Safale S-05 Dry Ale Yeast. Dry. 11.5g. Rehydrated.

Speciality Grains:

.75 lbs Belgian Caramel Pils
.25 lbs Briess Caramel 120

Malts:

6 lbs Pilsen malt syrup Liquid
1 lb. Pilsen malt extract dry

Hops:

1 oz. Chinook 60 minutes 11.2% AAU
.5 oz. Chinook 10 minutes 11.2% AAU
.5 oz. Chinook 1 minute 11.2% AAU
1 oz. Chinook Dry Hop 11.2% AAU

Calculated IBUs:  38 IBUs (via calculator)

OG: 1.070 @ 70 Degrees
FG:
ABV:

Brew Day Pics (11/12/2011):

 

 

 

 

 

Racked to Secondary (11/22/2011):

FG: 1.018

Bottled on 12/3/2011:

 

 

 

What Worked (surprisingly) Well – Sprint Tracker in Source Control 1

 in Tech  tagged agile / development / methodology / scrum / SDLC / software / sourcecontrol / sprint / standup by

This past sprint retrospective the team proposed that we change up the way our scrum team reports on task progress.  The team proposed that we keep our Sprint Tracker excel document in source control.   Then prior to the daily standup meeting each team member would check out the document, update the time remaining on their tasks, and check it back in.

I am surprised at how well this worked!  I was expecting that nobody would participate or somebody would forget to checkin and then go on vacation or any number of possibilities.  But I’m proud to report our standups are more effective and efficient because we spend more time to discussing what was done, what to do and what things are standing in the way.

Let me try and explain in more detail. (more…)