Chicago is a Big Data city.
https://data.cityofchicago.org serves 914 distinct, publicly accessible data sets including Beach Water Quality, Rat Infestations, Employee names and salaries. Chicago is "dedicated to promoting access to government data and encouraging the development of creative tools to engage and serve Chicago's diverse community". They have a Github site, video tutorials and sample API code. It is an immense data store!
Something tickled my pattern matching circuits while reading the countless articles analyzing the pricing of the Apple Watch and Apple's strategy behind it.
I like solar power. I've purchased over a dozen consumer solar panels from Brunton to PowerMonkey to Goal Zero in a search of a favorite. Goal Zero's older Nomad7 (purchased at a nice discount from TheClymb) is the newest leader.
Beer ticking is simply the act of keeping a record of every different beer you drink. It encourages you to order new beers and try a greater variety. Serious tickers take pride in the number of ticks they have – and can be obsessive about it. Watch the Beertickers Documentary for a hilarious take on the hobby.
No moon, no stars, only blackness. Freezing, failing headlamps reveal only a couple of meters of terrain around me. The 60kmph wind howls, cutting off speech and chilling us through to the core; it supports my weight when I lean into it, threatens to topple me if I don't. The bitter cold begins to affect me: My fingers, my nose are frozen and it creeps into my arms, threatening my core. One foot in front of the other, I trudge onward.Only a few days ago it was sunny and hot; beautiful flowers, trees, birds, monkeys. Then, I could talk to my friends, chat about inconsequential topics, learn Swahili, point out the landscape and features to one another. It was nice in the rain forest. Now there is only rock: black, pitted and dusty lava rock from this sleeping volcano. Now I can hear nothing but the howling wind; we do not attempt to speak for the effort required. Only a few words at the occasional rest stop, mumbled breathlessly through cracked and frozen lips. We must keep our rhythm, must keep moving to stay warm. We must keep moving.
Ice, extending behind us as far as we could see, crunched under our crampon laden feet. It had been a long day — 12 km across the glacier – but now the edge was in sight, and just beyond that a boat bobbed in the ocean awaiting our return.
If I'm entertaining even a few friends Murphy's law always expresses itself as "If guests are counting on beer, the keg will run out". Clearly more data (and more beer) is the solution to this problem: today we build a device to monitor the quantity of beer left in my Kegerator.
A couple years ago my truck was broken into: window smashed, stereo ripped out (joke's on them, it was broken). It made me realize how often I stow thousands of dollars worth of climbing, biking or camping gear in the cab vulnerable to an opportunist thief or a curious bear attracted by an overlooked gel packet. I needed a better solution.
My 2014 annual summary: http://brettsbeta.com/my2014/