Blaine Allen Brown

What's your pseudiac sign?

Problem: I don't want to carry around keys! They either poke me if they're in my pocket or they jangle when clipped to my hip. This is my genius idea to get rid of them forever! Required materials: Prepaid cell phone with ability to assign specific ringtones to contacts. Motor to turn deadbolt Some wire Procedure: So the idea is, you'd set your personal cell phone number to a personalized ringtone that would be "vibrate," and be sure to set everyone else to "not vibrate." Disconnect the vibration motor and hook it to turn the deadbolt motor on. So when you called the "home number" from your phone, it would turn the deadbolt and let you in! If anyone else called it would not. Uses: You don't have to carry keys around anymore, you can just call to gain entrance. Need someone to watch your cat while you're on vacation? You don't need to give them the key, just give add them to the address book. If you want to leave ...

I spend a lot of my time thinking about minimalism. First it was just as a design principle, but soon it became a way to approach living. For years I've read mnmlist and tried to adapt Leo Babauta's ideas into my own life. I just did an exercise I made up in which I list major possessions and get rid of anything I don't want. Possessions of note: PS2 and accessories and games Wii and accessories and games PSP and accessories and games Nintendo DS and accessories and games HP PC with Windows 7 Bamboo Pen + Touch Tablet Microsoft HD Life Webcam Cheap-o Microphone (looking to upgrade for podcast setup) 32 inch Olevia LCD TV HP Printer Scanner Copier Logitech Wireless Keyboard and Mouse Combo (one dongle!) Canon Rebel XS DSLR T-Mobile MyTouch 4G (with unlimited data) One backup phone (for when I drop this one) One Full Size Bed Four Armchairs (uncomfortable) Two Ottomans One Refrigerator One Space Heater Some Clothes Some Tools One Yoga Mat As you ...

 didn't participate in Earth Hour yesterday (because it's stupid), but it did get me thinking (which is probably the point). I am already somewhat energy conscious. For example I have things I use infrequently on separate power strips so that I can turn them off when they're not in use. This includes my PS2, Wii, and chargers for my DS and PSP. I feel like this is just common power management. Anyway, I wasn't home for Earth Hour and I thought about all that was running at home with no one there: 4 computers. I believe this is a remnant of the early Windows XP era, in which you always disabled the "Sleep" option on every computer you used. Anything could happen when a computer returned from sleep! The wireless card could have stopped working, all your programs probably crashed, and it was slow from some incorrectly stored memory from running programs. You might as well have turned the thing off, but starting a Windows machine still takes too long for me sinc...