I got myself a brand new iSi Twist n’ Sparkle Beverage Carbonating System. This little baby is the absolute bomb so I made a video review. It totally works as directed and will save me a boatload of money over the next year. I hope my review of the iSi Twist n’ Sparkle Beverage Carbonating System will make you go and buy one right away. Thanks goes out to my co-host of the In My Skine Podcast@Yoon001 and my buddy @ChrisOta for my new iSi Twist ‘n Sparkle.
I wanted one of these when I first saw it in my local Williams and Sonoma (my number one vice besides Moleskine Legendary Notebooks). I was lucky enought to get two of them for Christmas, my people really know me all to well. I had to make a video review of this and share it with the world.
At first glance you may think it is expensive at $49.99 for the starter set and $19.99 for 24 cartridges; however it is way cheaper and healthier than my beloved Pellagrino and safer for you than Soda.
I hope my review makes you want to go buy one right away.
Update on my Video Review:
I made Twist n’ Sparkle Grape-Apple juice last night and it was incredible. I used 100% fruit juice from Tropicana 10oz each of Grape and Apple then added some cold water to get it to the 950ml line. I places the whole bottle in the freezer for about 20 mins. When I was ready to fizzz it it had a thin layer of ice… It came out perfect. So my advise the colder the better. I think the more sugar content to fizzier but I like pure juices. This is gonna be great for my p90x training.
I love my Moleskine. However, if there any knocks against my famous Moleskine Legendary Notebooks it is the people that say they are expensive. On this point of course I beg to differ because I don’t find Moleskine Notebook expensive if you account for their high quality paper and nice build construction. Moleskine are higher quality notebooks, so yes, they do cost more than a standard Walmart composition pad or the little freebie notepad you get from your insurance agents during this time of the year. By the way, remember, garbage in garbage out. Actually in this case it’s garbage out garbage in. Maybe the adage is backwards, but there is a solution to the otherwise “quote-unqoute” expensive Moleskine Legendary Notebooks.
Bring on companies like Borders or Barnes and Noble who if you sign up for their affinity programs like the Borders Rewards Plus membership you will get your inbox flooded at least once a week by coupons allowing you to take 30% off, 40% off, 50% off and during the glorious holiday season like today upwards of 60% off any item you purchase in the store with said coupon. Simply, you print out these special coupons at home, carefully fold them up and place them safely in the back pocket of your Moleskine and head straight to your local Borders brick and mortar store.
Today I got just such a coupon offering me 33% off any item in the store with an additional 10% because I am a Borders Rewards Plus Member so today 60% off my $20 Moleskine a gives me a $8 Moleskine(Plus+ membership cost $20p/y). Not much more expensive than the piece of crap you could possibly buy from Wal-Mart.
So the way to save money and get the type of journal that you would love, is to simply sign up for a free Borders Rewards Membership card and just wait and watch him box for coupons a rolling and use those coupon times to buy your Moleskine Legendary Notebooks. Or if you buy a lot of books you can sign up for the Barnes & Noble’s Card which cost $25 however B&N offers a lot of times much bigger discounts on books, magazines, music and DVD’s. Both companies off discount on coffee to so the cards will pay for themselves in no time.
Since all the naysayers that say Moleskine Legendary Notebooks are pretentious and expensive I say shut the hell up print out your coupon and keep the pen moving. Well that’s enough of this blog post now my buddy Philip and I are on our way to Borders to buy more Moleskine Notebooks.
Oh yes the Christmas shopping season has been forced upon us early and every company is out there racing or jumping up and down screaming “ohh pick me pick me” like an over eager sixth grader to get our attention. Moleskine Legendary Notebooks are no different and they have just dropped a beautiful little gem on us.
Moleskine Folio Collection has just been fortified with these easy to use loose leaf and sticky notes dubbed Foilo Tools. Now Idon’t have to stick PostIt Notes In My Skine. It felt so vulgar before.
It includes the Stick Notes, a set of 3-packs of 20 sticky notes – 2 plain and 1 ruled, and the Memo Cards, a set of 20 cards – 10 ruled and 10 squared, all retaining the classic Moleskine mood, with ivory color pages and rounded corners. Both are folded into a small pocket cover to protect the corners and edges. They are conceived to fit right in with all your note taking needs, for memories, messages, any kind of list and flash notes, useful at work as in everyday life. -Moleskine Web site
For you viewing pleasure check out this cool stop-motion promotional video from MoleskineArt. If you feel so inclined you can get me these for Christmas.
Buster Benson’s 750 Words is a brain-dead simple as pie web application with only one goal… To keep you writing. The concept of 750 words is super simple: Everyday you find a way to craft 750 words which just happens to be the approximate word count for three pages of text. You write about whatever you want. It’s just a three page stream of conscious free writing tool.
Why 750 Words Is Worth Checking Out
This idea of writing 750 words per day is great for creating the keep writing work ethic; however the best part of this webapp is the visualization of you own personal data. When you created a few post you’ll get to have measured metrics of compositions. You can track how long it took, words you use the most, your subject matter and more. To give you an idea of how cool the metadata is check out 750words.com Explore page.
You will soon find even if you are a non-writer this site will at least get you brain working and is a great way to get unstuck. The writings are all private and nobody will ever lay eyes on your ramblings unless you export them.
I know this site is supposed to be my homage to Moleskine Legendary Notebooks but I find even if I’m writing in my ‘skine I like to let a quick 750 rip to this online tool when I can. Honestly I haven’t been keeping up with the daily requirements but I’m making a commitment to at least get’er done for the next 21 Days to see if I can recreate the habit.
Next Actions and A Quick Word of Caution
So go give 750 Words a try it is totally free and my just help keep your creative juices flowing. Signing up is easy though one of many authentication methods but make sure you remember which way you sign in. You’ll have to keep using that method forever or you’ll create new accounts for each method. I signed up using openid once and then Facebook Connect later and totally ended up with two accounts.
Update: Try The 750 Words One Month Challenge
Join me as I enter next months challenge for adding entries every day for the month of November.
Conclusion
All and all 750 Words is an awesome site and killer tool. Go forth and be fruitful with you writing
@DocRock and @Yoon001 talk about the “LiveScribe Echo” (http://www.livescribe.com) digital note-taking pen and goal setting.
In My ‘Skine (inmyskine.com) is about the Fanatic appeal of Moleskine Legendary Notebooks and One Wanna Be Author’s journey to create his first book in 30 days.
The horror story of all writers weather student, employee, poet, novelist or songwriter is the day they go to open up their homework or project and the file is corrupted, deleted or otherwise missing. Never let this happen to you again. Keeping you data backed is super easy these days. You really need to be backing up your data… No REALLY! There is a wide variety of online backup solutions offering pretty fast performance but are not truly full featured backup systems. Many of us uber-geeks have tried a gamut of online backup services both free and paid; only to find them all lacking. Many of us were convinced this was a lost quest. On the other spectrum is those who have never tried an online backup service. Well, I have a solution for everyone… Dropbox(www.dropbox.com)
Dropbox is the holy grail of online backup services that will leave you tickled pink and literally laughing out loud. It is a totally painless backup solution that even my brother-in-law can use.
Dropbox works on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and iPhone and provides simple file syncing, sharing, and backup; like a cheesy Ronco commercial all you do is “Set It and Forget It.” Jump on over to Dropbox.com and sign up for a free account. Once you’ve signed up, download the easy to install helper application leaving all the settings as default (standard configuration is best). Finally, start copying your important files into the Dropbox folder on your computer and the helper app takes care of all the rest.
The software’s main task is to watch a specified folder in your computer. Whatever you have placed in that folder, may it be music files, documents or videos, all will instantly and automatically be backed-up by the software to the Dropbox WebDav(Cloud) Servers. If you have multiple computers just install the helper application on all of them and the files in the Dropbox watch folders will be synced. All the computers will have the same files right down to the last edits. If you should accidentally leave a file at home just go to the website and you’ll have full access to all of your Dropboxed files. It even saves your assets if you mistakenly delete an important file. There is a way the retrieve deleted files from the Dropbox web app… Trust me I know this first hand.
I use drop box to house the database file for many of my apps giving me the same data on multiple machines. I’ll do a separate post on this later.
If you do nothing else this year for yourself, get Dropbox. Start out with the freemium version and soon you will be getting a $99 per year full account that lets you have a whopping 50GB of online storage. Hope you find this useful in the New Year.
Ok until I have time to produce the introduction video about why I’m doing this project I though I had better give a quick overview of InMySkine. So while I had the idea fresh in my head and after being asked about 20 times what I was doing at Kahala Mall Center late at night, I kidnapped my friend Phillip who was working at Starbucks and demanded he be an impromptu cameraman.
I found out through my research after many years of trying to reteach people how to properly pronounce Mole-a-skine-a the company recently gave up and said you can say it however you like but that a whole different blog post coming soon.
In case you haven’t figured it out I am a Moleskine fanboy. One of the newest and greatest features launched by Moleskine is the MSK make you own Journal Pages. With MyMoleskine Templates you can clip articles from the web, add a picture, print custom agenda pages, leave yourself motivational notes or basically whatever you want.
The templates are easy to setup using the “Wizard” feature. You simply give you page a title, choose you preferred notebook format and layout style, enter your musings and press print. Once you have your new custom page(s) all you’ll need to do is cut them out and grab a gluestick to add them to your ‘Skine.
If you are still feeling a little bit stuck creatively you will find some specialty pages created my Moleskine Minions. You can create pages like:
Personal Data Pages
Weekly Planner
Storyboard (handy when you need to storyboard and you did not but the storyboard version of the notebook)
Best of 2010 (these pages allow you list freaks to make lists of you faves for the year. is websites, wines, movies, songs… etc..)
Project Planner (One of my personal favorites as this lets you create a mini Gantt Chart)
The list is incredible, I was able to make a NCAA March Madness Brackets set of pages to give providence of the Cinderella teams I picked to win. Nothing like having you evidence etched in stone or at least pen anyway. I would defiantly convert you to a ‘Skine-Head if you have not already become on. Most of the comments I get when folks see me using one of my custom pages is “I didn’t know you could do that!”. Well there you have it no more excuses as to why you are not keeping a personal journal using Moleskine writing journals.
Check out Moleskine MSK Video for a quick overview and the links included for more information:
http://www.moleskine.com/msk.php
Some people ask me why do I buy such expensive notebooks? Truth is they are not that expensive unless you’re comparing them to the $.77 crap rags from Wal-Mart. Moleskine notebooks just have a great paper quality and a nice feel with almost any pen.
There is a time the buy the good one like the new folio or Passion Series. Then time is now because B&N.com and the Barnes and Noble Booksellers Stores have a sale on everything Moleskine.
“Moleskine brand is synonymous with culture, travel, memory, imagination, and personal identity—in both the real world and the virtual world.” And with fan-made videos on YouTube and 55,000facebook fans. I have to say you they rock.
I just got a new Wine Journal from the Passion Series. Now I have to drink to fill up up
