Things I have loved this year – tv, apps, podcasts

I listened to A LOT of podcasts this year. It started with The Nerdist (which I still love) and led me to some comedy podcasts that I DIDN’T enjoy so much but ultimately I found Girl on Guy (Aisha Tyler) and Sklarbro Country (the Sklar brothers) which made up for any missteps. Episode 1 of Girl on Guy has, by far, the funniest story I have ever heard. The rest of her shows are right in my wheelhouse. She’s a chick who thinks like a dude and has wide-ranging interests and plenty of geek hobbies. And she’s funny. Sklarbro Country is a great combination of comedy and sports with impressive guests. I’m less enamored of their ‘celebrity call in’ segment but it’s toward the end so I usually just skip it.

I also love Pop Culture Happy Hour and Culturetopia from NPR. The former was a recommendation by my friend Mimi and it consistently makes me laugh.

Book podcasts! Bookrageous is a fave because it’s three friends talking about books and graphic novels they like and frequently trying to convince one another to read something they love. It’s been great and I got a couple of excellent recs out of it this year, not to mention it’s fun to listen to. Incidentally, I recommend Brews and Books (Josh’s blog) since it’s the way I found the podcast and I love his beer reviews. Books on the Nightstand is a little more polished but also gave me great reading ideas this year.

Sound Opinions from NPR was my go-to music podcast and I enjoyed every single episode.

The 404 was my geekcast of choice, as I have raved about before. Buzz Out Loud switched to once a week podcasts with special coverage episodes, which means I listened to it more than I would have expected.

Doug Loves Movies was, hands down, the funniest podcast I listened to all year. I could be seen laughing out loud at work REGULARLY while listening.

Android Apps:

Words with Friends. Do I really have to explain this? I was the kind of kid who learned to play Scrabble by making the coolest words we could- we didn’t keep score. Words with Friends has taught me strategy. I dig it.

Tweetcaster replaced Tweetdeck toward the end of the year because it’s got a great user interface and it does everything I want it to.

No Time to Cook by Real Simple is a great app and cost about the same as one issue of the magazine. Consistently delicious recipes. ChefTap I already raved about but I am still loving it and having lots of success.

Foursquare continues to be my default ‘travel’ app, with a side of OpenTable for getting reservations. My fave utilities are Springpad and OurGroceries. My calendar is Jorte, whose only fault as far as I can see is an inability to create bi-weekly events. Now that I work in an office with a radio, I understand and use Shazam.

Gentle Alarm is still the way I wake up and I still love it. Tea Timer has been great for making tea, the Starbucks app is great if you’ve got a Starbucks nearby (I no longer do) and the Eljay app has made my LJ flist mobile.

Tab Tools is a GREAT app for guitar tabs and my goal for the new year is to actually USE the Meditation Support Timer.

Greader and Gmail are on my homescreen with G+ and Tweetcaster. Password Card is the best thing for creating safe passwords on the go.

Dear Emergency Medical Spanish App – YOU ARE AWESOME.

Untappd is a recent addition which I’m playing with. Verdict is still out.

TV.

Dude. I watched A LOT of TV this year.

Tops on my list: Revenge, Justified, Homeland, Community, Castle, Sons of Anarchy, Once Upon a Time, Grimm, Criminal Minds, Modern Family, Ringer, The Mentalist and Covert Ops.

Whether it was brain candy (Revenge, Covert Ops, Grimm, Once Upon a Time, Ringer), interesting crime drama (Justified, Homeland, Sons of Anarchy, Castle) or comedy (everything else), this was the stuff that made me keep watching.

Revenge is campy, but awesomely so (and FYA does GREAT recaps), Covert Ops is slightly less campy but equally fun. I’m enjoying the modern takes on fairy tales and I loved the comedies. That said, if I was going to recommend something to everyone, it would be Homeland, Sons of Anarchy and Justified.

Homeland had tight and intense writing, focused storylines without a dozen hanging threads and some INCREDIBLE performances. Claire Danes better get an Emmy. Watching Sons of Anarchy is like a terrible accident – you know what’s probably going to happen, you can’t look away and then HOLY SHIT something else comes out of the blue – but so out of the blue that you disengage, you’re just pissed you didn’t see it coming. Justified has Timothy Olyphant so that’s 1. He’s a cowboy in Wild West sense of the word, so that’s 2. It’s got one of the most interesting fencesitting characters (is he good? is he terrible? does he even KNOW?) in Boyd Crowder that I’ve seen on television, so that’s 3. Add in the very specific kind of subculture that happens in rural areas and it’s engaging, thoughtful and consistently a wild ride.

So there you go. That’s my favorites roundup. My list of this year’s books is at Goodreads and I think I posted about MOST of them, so you should be able to click on the 2011 books tag on this post and get all the entries. At Goodreads the books are all listed chronologically. I’m hoping to get through a reread of some of the Dresden Files books this weekend so I can start catching up.

Things I have loved this year- web and music

Websites:

I found Forever YA through my mad love of the Hunger Games series and this post pretty much sums up what I love about the site. Their recs of the best of the year cover a wide range of topics, narrators and genres. The conversations I’ve seen and participated in have been interesting and I frequently found myself bookmarking their recommendations.

Jezebel continues to be my go-to pop culture website. I love the snark and social consciousness and their no-holds-barred shouting about those who belittle/denigrate/reduce/disempower women. Also, the snark.

The Daily Dish has provided interesting political commentary from many sides (I rarely click through from my RSS feed, but still) and Questionable Content remains my favorite webcomic despite having flirted with a few others this year.

Paste has filled my GReader with lovely music tidbits and the BrokeAss Gourmet has given me good recipes as well as some culinary inspiration.

Possibly my single favorite recipe of the year is this one for General Tso’s Chicken, which proves that you CAN make takeout in your kitchen that tastes JUST as good as the restaurant.

Goodreads has not only been great for conversation about books but their book challenges (self-determining) and bookshelves have made a nice way to keep track of what I find interesting and what I’ve been reading. Twitter and Google Plus require no links but are my social media outlets of choice. My twitter feed is embedded on this site and it’s my first line social updating mechanism on my phone. I like Google Plus for different reasons – I’m more likely to share things there (links, comments) because it feels more like conversations and has far less asshats than does facebook (which I log into – at most – once a week).

Music:

This was an amazing year in music helped in no small part by the early 2011 release of The King is Dead by The Decemberists. It’s a fantastic and engaging album which even turned Spouse on to their tunes. In concert, they were every bit as amazing as their recordings and the house-crushing rendition of The Mariner’s Revenge is one of my favorite music moments of all time.

The Black Keys released another album (El Camino) and continue to THE band I want to see at Red Rocks. Spouse loves their work, too and it was difficult to determine who was more excited about the latest record. The bluesy-classic rock mashup style consistently makes me want to MOVE and it’s impossible to be in a bad mood with this in your ears.

One of my vendors was playing something on his phone while working and it grabbed my attention in an unexpected way. “What IS that?” “The Cat Empire.” This began my obsession with Two Shoes which led to my purchase of their entire back catalog and not finding a single beat of disappointment on any song in any album. They describe themselves as a ska/reggae/jazz band and I defy you to find anything wrong with any part of that.

Miranda Lambert has single-handedly brought me back to country music. Between her latest album (Four the Record) and side project (The Pistol Annies), she is my new female music hero. Smart and snappy lyrics without the heavy pop sound a lot of country musicians are leaning on, she defines “kick ass”.

Feist and Florence + the Machine both put out new work which I enjoyed a lot but didn’t grab me like the aforementioned records. I’m also going to admit to enjoying Taylor Swift’s Speak Now. And I know everyone’s been creaming their pants about Adele’s 21 but I’m straight up going to tell you this was an album fungus for me. On first listen I wasn’t knocked out and thought it was fairly derivative of 19 (which DID knock me out, for the record) but it definitely grew on me. It was not my default listen of the year, though.

Baby, Darling, Dollface, Honey by Band of Skulls – I can’t remember when I got it but I definitely played it a lot this year. Grab you by the balls guitar rock.

Harlem River Blues by Justin Townes Earle, The Head and the Heart (self titled),  Sigh No More by Mumford and Sons, Guster’s Easy Wonderful and Sarah Jarosz’s Follow Me Down round up my most-played indie/folk albums of the year.

In dance music news, I had Femme Fatale (Britney) and Cannibal (Ke$ha) in hard rotation along with Robyn’s Robyn and Body Talk. When I was increasingly frustrated at work, these albums helped prevent me braining coworkers by chucking pallets at them overhand. Both Britney and Ke$ha had to grow on me – while several of the songs are out of the gate badass there are a couple of fungi in there. It got to the point where I even liked THOSE songs, so that says something. Robyn, on the other hand, INHABITS dance. I’m inclined to believe she can’t make a misstep when it comes to her album picks.

James Blake’s debut album is also excellent, blending a post-dub sound with mellow jam and making it perfect for entertaining.

Next post: apps, podcasts and TV

Kindle updates & Kindle Fire 3G?

I’m still loving my Ktouch, having thoroughly settled into its features. In fact, I’ve got four books (though one of them is technically six books) from the library and looking forward to more excellent reading in the new year.

Spouse is liking his Kindle Fire – at any rate has decided not to return it. The free apps have been a hit and the latest software update which allows carousel manipulation went over HUGE. He can check his secure work email, use Microsoft Office, play games and watch Netflix. He’s opted out of the Prime membership because he wasn’t that jazzed about the free (included) movie/tv selection.

Meghan asked if I thought Amazon would start offering 3g/4g service anytime soon. It turns out I DO have an opinion about this but I figured it would be longer than a comment. The short answer is no. With the regular kindle readers, the amount of information downloaded is pretty small given the size of book files. Of course, I don’t know the details of the whispernet deal but I’ve got to figure that even with the number of devices in use, the data chargers are fairly nominal.

The Fire changes that significantly, being as it is a device geared primarily for streaming. Whether it’s Netflix, prime service or music – that’ s going to add up to a lot of bandwith. Trying to spread that cost across devices would bring the price up to a point where people would start comparing the Fire and iPads as apples to apples and the Fire would come up short. As it is, one of the biggest complaints I’ve heard about the iPads is that in addition to a $400 device, NOW the user has to buy a data plan to make it functional.

That said, I see a definite market for Amazon to get into the data plan business. Without offering the more complicated network of cell service and all the pitfalls inherent to those sorts of plans, it wouldn’t surprise me if Amazon cut a deal with one (or more) cell carriers to offer strictly data service at a discount to their customers and at THAT point it would make sense for a 3g/4g Kindle Fire rollout with a wifi option.

Thus far, Spouse seems to be getting the use out of the Fire that he hoped for/expected. He’s mentioned on several occasions that he can do work on the Fire during meetings that he really COULDN’T do with a laptop because of the social implication that having the screen up on a laptop means you’re not paying attention. He gets to participate in the meeting but can also utilize his time wisely without an etiquette breach.

Salvage the Bones

This ended up being book 60 of  55 Books I Read And Am Willing to Tell People About. I’m pleasantly surprised to be exceeding my goal but I’ll probably keep it to 55 again next year. With any luck, I’m going to end this year’s reading with some brain candy.

Back to my original point: After reading about a dozen reviews that loved Salvage the Bones but didn’t seem to really know how to TALK about it (including Jen Weiner, who I LOVE), when it came up as a Kindle Special Offer for $2, there was no chance I was passing it up.

First, the hype is justified. It’s an incredibly lovely novel, written with equal parts hope and sadness and captures an experience that most will only ever read about. The language is beautiful and the characters painfully well-rendered. For those unfamiliar, it’s the story of an impoverished family’s experience surrounding Hurricane Katrina. Before you jump to the ‘holy depressing’ conclusion, it’s also an amazing story about community and family and how we try to take care of our own. Definitely worthy of the acclaim and awards.

In only tangentially related news, I completed my online FEMA emergency training and while being PAINFULLY DULL it’s actually full of good things which makes me hopeful about our response to further natural and man-made disasters.

My hope for the new year

That everyone – no matter what you believe – prints a copy of this and puts it on their desk or in their office. Because really? How can it NOT make things better?

Seriously, people. Shit is tough, but you CHOOSE to be an asshole. Take a breath. Don’t be a dick.

My holiday gift to you

I spent a large chunk of today looking about the web for a good way to corral the recipes I find online, add my own and have access to all of it on my phone. Since I’m a nice person, I shall share with you the fruit of my labors.

First and foremost, I spent a worthwhile bit of time consolidating and organizing my bookmarks in Chrome so that it syncs them all and everything is in easily identifiable folders on all the computers I use. AMAZING. There is no proper reason for me to feel as smug about this as I do.

Some time ago I purchased the Real Simple android app and it was worth the $5. You get to choose the amount of time you have to cook as well as a protein and then it gives you a list of options to choose from. Every recipe I’ve ever made from Real Simple has been fantastic and the app is a collection of those.

Today I added OurGroceries (free), so that Spouse and I can avoid duplicating purchases at the grocery store. It syncs the lists so we each know what we need and can check them off as we go.

But what about the initial premise- adding stuff I find online and my own recipes? I attempted My Cookbook first but when you attempt to add a recipe from a webpage, it’s rather a shit show as to what will actually import correctly.

Through a vast amount of googling and some trial and error, I tripped upon ChefTap (free). I tend to be skeptical of anything that claims to be “the first” to do anything but I’ve got to tell you this app is the shit. I imported recipes from no less than 5 websites, all of which look vastly different in structure, and where MyCookbook failed ChefTap kicked ass. They imported brilliantly and formatted exactly as desired. The only downside to this app: no desktop, so you’ll have to do the browsing from your phone or send yourself links to add the recipes from webpages. On the other hand, it’s vastly superior to me having to type in ANYTHING on my own.

As a second bit of awesome, ChefTap will also sync and import any recipes from epicurious.com and allrecipes.com (neither of which have mobile apps that sync across all platforms). This has persuaded me to open an account at epicurious and the sync feature is pretty brilliant.

In related free apps, I also got Sweet and Spicy Indian Food so I’m pretty stoked to try that out as well.

I’m starting to add my frequently made/favorite recipes/recipes from mom on Epicurious and then searching out other faves online so that I’ve got them with me all the time.

I also took a bit off the BrokeAss Gourmet’s Cranberry-Zinfandel Brownie Bites and adapted them for fresh cranberries and high altitude. I’m pretty happy with how they turned out, thought I think I might want a mini-cupcake pan since I made mine in regular cupcake liners.

Incidentally, this was all prompted by making a fantastic General’s Chicken recipe for lunch today and wanting it on my phone for a shopping list. Spouse is working out and I’m couched in the basement with a bottle of Snow Day and Dr. Who Netflixing on my TV.

Hppy

As it turns out

I don’t give a flying fuck about The Hobbit film.

I AM, however, fired up about the new Mission Impossible and Young Adult.

So there.

Hey girl, I’mma leave this post

Yes, that’s a Ryan Gosling/Kanye West meme mashup. Because THAT’S the kind of nerd I am. Know what other kind of nerd I am? I got a Littman II Classic and that motherfucker is LIKE MAGIC. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s totally fine – just keep scrolling.

Book 59 of 50 this year turned out to be The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova. I remembered enjoying The Historian but not so much I wanted to purchase this particular book, so I checked it out from the library. The premise involves a mystery surrounding a painting and the disturbed artist who attempted to attack it. It’s told in varying viewpoints by the shrink, the artist’s wife, the artist’s mistress and a painter in the 1800s.

There was probably not a single twist I didn’t predict, which is not a dealbreaker for me. I was thoroughly uninterested in the mistress, so I skimmed her chapters. The language, while lovely, was a bit… forced throughout. For example, you can write the way people speak or write the way they’d write (which is frequently more lovely) but you can’t purport that speech patterns are the same as writing patterns as I’ve literally never met anyone in my life who speaks exactly as they write. That was just a bit weird.

I think my biggest complaint is that it took the best story elements and techniques from The Blind Assassin and Possession and just didn’t deliver well on it. It doesn’t help that those are two of my favorite novels but I was predisposed to enjoy the premise and the mode of storytelling and ultimately for me it just fell a bit flat. Which is not to say it was BAD because lord knows I’ve read some absolute shit this year that I wouldn’t even talk about (hence the 50 list) and this was a good read, it just fell a bit short of its potential.

Hrm. Self edit here: I looked at my review of The Historian and apparently I DIDN’T enjoy it that much (I gave it two stars), so I guess this comes out ahead at 3 stars.

Unrelated, I’ve been inspired by the BrokeAss Gourmet and I think I’m going to create a recipe for Dark Chocolate Cranberry brownies. I’ve got spare cranberries.

Also, Dear WordPress: I KNOW there’s an update but I’m not installing it until I’m completely convinced it will not utterly fuck up my site. This is because I had that whole snafu earlier this year with my site being utterly b0rked and that’s not how I’m looking to go into the new year. I’mma let you update in my own damn time.

Homeland

The reason that Homeland was the best thing on TV this year is because nothing has looked at loyalty, patriotism, terrorism and personal identity like this since the BSG reboot. They’ve handled mental illness deftly and with not only compassion but sympathy. Claire Danes has been nothing short of brilliant and Damian Lewis predictably awesome. Unlike BSG, which put you in the position of empathizing with the “terrorists”, Homeland has taken a hard look at the reasons that people believe in extreme measures – on both sides. What is perfectly clear is that there is no black and white and that there are no absolutes when it comes to defending those beliefs. Both sides are wrong, both sides have valid points, both sides make colossal mistakes. Homeland has taken come intense and complex stories and unthreaded them in a compelling, edge-of-your-seat way. The finale was just as unexpected as every other episode and just as gripping. I can’t wait to see what they do with the next season.

How do I use Twitter?

I saw a post this week about why Twitter did a re-design and it had a lot to do with drawing in new users and making it more useful. It got me thinking about how I use Twitter and the ways that I explain it to non-users that ask me about it. Pretty frequently I hear the “I don’t get it” response when I mention that I use it a lot.

First, I rarely use the Twitter website. Ever since they removed their ‘retweet with comment’ feature I virtually never log in on the actual site. It’s not that I use that feature ALL the time, but I LIKED that option more than probably anything else they had going for them. So Twitter, if you’re listening, for the love of all that’s holy or if you’re planning to monetize your site, BRING IT BACK.

For that reason I use a client on my phone (I rarely check Twitter from a computer, in no small part because there was no way to do it from my last job but mostly because having it on my phone is really handy. Ha! Pun!). I’ve been using TweetDeck for probably a year and while I liked it, there were a couple of annoyance factors. The biggest one is viewing favorite tweets. I tend to favorite tweets that have links so that I can read them later on a computer or just generally use as a ‘read later’ option. Tweetdeck made it hard to get at the favorite tweets.

This week I switched to Tweetcaster, which has a pretty nifty and modern-looking UI. It also has a column for favorite tweets, lets you choose which services you want to use for url shortening and twitter photos and – best of all – when you click a link you can open it or READ LATER. Love it.

All of this brings me around to how I actually USE twitter. Twitter is part of how I keep track of what’s going on in the world during the day. The Denver Post is my news tweeter of choice, but I’ve got a couple of other newsfolk on there. It’s also my brain break- I’ve got NPR music, a bunch of authors and comedians, bloggers and real life and internet friends. Television Without Pity takes care of my tv snark tweets and a couple of my favorite podcasters are on there not just for jokes but because they also tell me when their new stuff is up.

Personally, I tweet about a bunch of random shit. Books I’m reading or have read, TV shows I’m watching, music I’m listening to at any given moment, movies or, frankly, any damn thing that crosses my mind. Reading my twitter stream at any point will give you a pretty good idea of who I am, so I think – at least the way I do it = it really is microblogging. I’ve gotten great book, music and film recommendations on there. I’ve had really entertaining meme interactions. I’ve also had good conversations about a variety of subjects and gotten great restaurant tips.

Twitter is like the planet’s stream of consciousness and for that reason alone, I think it’s cool.

Hausfrau Dinnerblog

I know. Dinner is wicked exciting.

This week there was a kind of awesome post over at ForeverYA about traditional Sunday dinner, which made me want to make a pot roast. Instead of using chuck roast, I bought top round and baby carrots instead of having to cut things up and I also chucked in some sliced mushrooms.

The recipes also include one for brussel sprouts which I’ve eaten exactly TWICE and liked them (once I made them myself, with bacon). It has a prune (gack) and balsamic reduction but I think I’m going to use some thick cut bacon, balsamic vinegar and medjool dates. That sounds way more tasty. The roast is currently cooking with veg in the oven, basted with New Belgium’s 1554. I’m dorkishly excited about blanching the sprouts because I think the key is to not have them too mushy. Plus, bacon. How can I possibly go wrong? Add the sweetness of the dates and the tart of the balsamic, I’m stoked about seeing how this concoction turns out.

Link to the Forever YA article. Aside: I love their LadyNerd series.

I’ll admit it

I spent an embarrassing amount of time this weekend watching cheesy holiday made-for-tv movies on the Hallmark Channel. Ridiculous. Some of them were actually worth it, though.

I finished book 57 over the weekend – The Postmistress. It was similar in tone to The Distant Hours (though I felt The Distant Hours had a more compelling story) and is set in the same time period. While I enjoyed it, I had the sense throughout the entire book of WAITING for something to HAPPEN. And then when something happened, it felt like I went back to waiting another several chapters. Hrm. Of the two, The Distant Hours is to be preferred.

Catching up

I haven’t blogged in a bit because 1) holidays. Thanksgiving was nothing short of epic – our friends came over and we watched football and drank and had great conversation and played games – for 13 hours. It was fantastic.

2) Job change. Black Friday was set to be my last day and when I woke up, I couldn’t be arsed to go. And thus, the old job ends. My new job begins tomorrow and I am very excited about it.

3) Travel. Having the long weekend, I went to Glenwood Springs with Spouse and enjoyed a bit of out of town scenery.

4) Nonprofit news. I’ve spent a bit of my free time putting together articles of incorporation and bylaws and basically getting things in order so that I can make this happen. Very exciting.

In semi-related news, I’ve made the 55 Books I Want to Talk About goal – a month early.

Book 56 is The Paris Wife by Paula McLain.

I LOVED this. Anyone who knows me knows I’m a Hemingway fan and I’ve a particular relationship with A Moveable Feast (my favorite of his works) having traced a fair bit of it through Europe on my own. I was always a bit fascinated by his relationship with Hadley but I’m not much for biographical research. This is incredibly executed and wonderfully imagined, it’s about complex people and the difficulty of relationships (also a theme in my 2011 books?). Hemingway sounds like Hemingway which lends all sorts of credibility to the novel. Hadley is an engaging and thoughtful character and the dynamics not only of their relationship but all their relationships in Paris and beyond are visceral.

I haven’t highlighted a book on my Kindle in ages and I highlighted a BOATLOAD of brilliant bits in this. In fact, I was rather surprised to not find much in “public highlights” mostly because this was incredible. Lovely, lovely, lovely. This is one I got as a library lender but I’ll definitely be purchasing a copy.

Thanksgiving prep, part deux

Thus far I have obtained:

a turkey (already thawing) 11 lbs

brine and aromatics

ingredients for one cranberry sauce recipe

ingredients for most of a second cranberry sauce recipe

ingredients for mulled wine

ingredients for mom’s stuffing

fresh green beans

things I still need to obtain:

more cranberries

an orange

ingredients for my mother-in-law’s mac and cheese

ingredients for pumpkin torte

things I should probably delegate:

rolls

another side dish

pumpkin pie?

Fruit Loops and Zombies

Two great tastes that taste great together.

Actually, this is mostly a post to test a couple of new plug-ins but it would be boring if I just came right and said that.