Overall I was pleased with this purchase, so when Adam needed new glasses as well, we returned to EyeBuyDirect for another purchase. I definitely learned a few things my first time ordering online, so I felt more comfortable with this second purchase.  I am in no way affiliated with EyeBuyDirect.  For my first order, I chose EyeBuyDirect over other popular choices like Zenni Optical or  $39 Dollar Glasses because after adding my prescription lens with a tint they were the cheapest choice.  Many online eyeglass sellers can be misleading because they don’t share upfront the cost of adding a prescription lens to the frame you choose.  Make sure you do your research with whoever you choose.  The second time around I decided to go with EyeBuyDirect again because of this.  During the holiday season, they offer 50% off Gift Vouchers (I don’t know when this offer will expire).  You can only use one voucher per order and it is a one time deal, meaning you cannot reuse any of your unused voucher money.  It is smart to put your order together first to see how much voucher money you will need.

Adam and I already had an order in place for 4 pairs, that’s right, FOUR pairs of glasses.  He wanted three pairs; an everyday pair, a computer use only pair, and a sport sunglasses pair.  I was putting in an order for a second pair of everyday glasses because I have the tendency to break my glasses.  The last time that happened I was without glasses for over a month.  I figure (for me) a backup pair is a necessity.  This brought our order total to around $158.00.  Since the gift vouchers come in $20-$100 values (and you can’t use more than one), I went ahead and purchased a $100 voucher for Adam to use on the order.  It was supposed to be sent instantly to my email.  So I waited.  And waited.  And waited!  Finally I contacted customer service and had a surprisingly lovely chat.  (I removed names and personal information from the chat log. You can also see the quirky files that were on my desktop at the time.)

The customer service person resolved the issue by giving my gift voucher redemption code directly.  Thank goodness!  Adam promptly placed our order.

Although our order total is only $61.37, you have to keep in mind that I paid $50 for the voucher, so in actuality we spent $111.37.  This means we spend $27.84 on average for each pair of prescription glasses.  Not too shabby!

Oh, I almost forgot.  EyeBuyDirect offers “loyalty dollars” so I was able to save an additional $3 because of my previous purchase.  They also gave me a code to share on facebook, twitter, or other social media that will save you 15% and give me $5 off when it is used.  If you are interested, my EyeBuyDirect coupon code to share for 15% off is: IFT2Q1B7BB

Happy eyeglass shopping!  Be sure to read my tips for ordering glasses online here.  I will post part two to this review once my order arrives.  I can’t wait!

UPDATED with new app (see end of post for the new addition).

Before Heading Out:

Before going out for the night, you have to check the weather and the skies. There are several apps I like to use for this. Droid Clear Sky is one such app. It gives a simple familiar cloud cover forecast using data from Clear Dark Skies. It is also Open Source so go check out the code if you like.

Another app for checking if it will be a good night to go stargazing which has a lot of other information as well is Astro Panel. It gives much more information than DroidSky such as humidity and transparency among other stats.

My favorite app by far for forecasting cloud cover has to be Where Its Cloudy by Aquila Systems. This app is fast and very accurate, showing you live updates of data from NOAA satellites showing visible and infrared (of course use the infrared at night) maps of water vapor (clouds).

You also should check out the Skyweek app which let’s you know dates and times of interesting astronomical events. When is Io being eclipsed by Jupiter? The Skyweek app will let you know.

SpaceWx is a great program that collects and displays tons of current information from several sources such as Rice University and NOAA among many others. Topics include graphs of everything from solar wind to current air temperatures. My favorite part is the link to the NOAA Aurora predictions (in the magnetosphere section). It isn’t often we see auroras in the Carolinas, but I would hate to miss the chance.

Neat Stuff in the Sky:

A fun past time is satellite spotting. The best time for this is at dawn or twilight, but with the help of a few apps you can always be aware of what satellites are overhead and whether or not they are visible.

Droid Sat is a great augmented reality satellite tracking app. Use it as a window to the sky and visually track a few satellites and the ISS (international Space Station) as they cross the sky. One of my favorite things about this app is that it is open source. I’ve been wanting to check the code out pretty badly, but I know I won’t have time to play with it.

Satellite AR is another great augmented reality app which gives you tons of potentially visible satellites to track. Also, clicking on each satellite can load a webpage about that particular satellite or piece of space junk.

Heavens Above is another great app for satellite and space junk spotting. It has a nice widget and  the ability to alarm you for possible sightings.

Iridium Flares, reflections off the Iridium satellite phone satellites, are by far the most frequent and easiest satellites to spot.  Two great apps that will help you spot them are Iridium Flare Forecast and Iridium Flares.

Iridium Flare Forecast is nice because it allows you to automatically scan your location based of your wireless cell tower location, or GPS and allows you to add a flyby event to your calendar.

Iridium Flares is good because it shows you a google map overlay with expected flybys and can be set up to scan and alarm you when flybys occur. It also has a night mode to make sure not to ruin you night vision.

Meteor Shower Calender is a neat little app that helps you catch shooting stars! It will alarm you when meteor showers are visible or at their peak, giving you plenty of time to plan ahead and spot at least a few meteors.

When You Finally Get Outside:

Once you get out into the night and begin looking at the skies, there are a couple of must-have apps I always use for setting up the scope or identifying things in the sky.

A good red flashlight is invaluable, and instead of carrying around a separate device, why not use you phone? The Astronomy Flashlight is great because it doesn’t require any permissions. There are several choices for red flashlights, but others often ask for shady permissions such as making phone calls or reading you address book.  The AstronomyFlashlight is simple and has several options. Pick from red, grey or white colored screen, and adjust the brightness of this choice using an on-screen slider.

I also like the use of a level for leveling out my telescope. One that I have found useful (though it does not have a night mode) is Spirit Level Plus. It is simple and effective and does all I need it to.

To calculate the magnification of my scope using different eyepieces, I use Telescope Calculator by Skyworks.

For polar aligning, I like to use PolarFinder (SigmaFinder for residents of the Southern Hemisphere)

You can use also the polar finding portion of Astro Tools. It will also show you the hour angle of Polaris and what to look for in the sky.  This app is another that can use the orientation sensor and shows a nice star chart. It seems a bit unfinished as of yet but it seems to be coming along well.

Star Odyssey is a neat app that gives you more than just the names of stars, but other facts as well. Stars can be sorted by distance, name or brightness. And you can even filter for stars with planets.

Of course no list would be complete without mentioning Google Sky Map. This app allows you to use your phone as a window to the heavens. It labels the stars you are pointing at, and has a great search function. The night mode makes it easy to seek out and identify objects in the sky without blinding yourself.

A completely mind blowing and beautiful app is The Invisible Universe which again uses orientation sensors in your phone to show you things in the sky, but displays results of Gamma ray, Xray, far infrared and other telescope findings. These different frequency ranges allow us to see amazing details the visible spectrum just cannot provide such as stars forming in thick gas clouds and much more. This app is truly artful and a must have for anyone even slightly interested in science.

Miscellaneous Useful Apps:

And finally, here few additional apps I like to use to help find my way around the sky and to troubleshoot sensor readings when my google sky map, or other readings don’t match up with the sky.

GPS Status is a really great app that can help diagnose GPS issues.

Sensor List is a simple direct output of all the sensors on your phone. This is invaluable for verifying your sensors are working correctly, which is a requirement of many of the apps. Mentioned in this list.

New Compass (AD) is a good app for testing the compass sensor in the phone, as well as just to get my bearings.

Sun Surveyor Lite is a neat app that shows the sun’s orientation and angle throughout the day.

UPDATED:  I just found another great app called SkEye. Basically you strap your phone to your telescope and align it with a known celestial object. From then on, your phone acts as an accurate guide to everything your scope is pointing to (PUSHTO guide). This is far more useful than any other sky mapping app out there.

Of course, there are many other apps out there, and many I have not yet tried. These are the ones I have tried and use repeatedly. If you enjoy using these apps, be sure to pop for the paid or upgraded versions of them if they are available!

Many people are curious about linux, or maybe have even tried linux at some point. There is a huge difference between people trying linux, and people using linux. Hopefully this article will sort of ease your transition into using linux, either as a full time OS or even just enough to get around if you ever encounter it. Once you are familiar with software on one OS, its tough to move on but with this article I hope to list out some linux software that replaces many of the XP programs I once loved and how to run certain irreplaceable Windows software on linux.

The version of linux used here is Linux Mint, which is built off Ubuntu.

(Image provided by Wikimedia Commons. Authors Larry Ewing, Simon Budig, Anja Gerwinski)

Image Editing:

While using XP, the best image editor I found was Paint.NET. This software gave a perfect blend of advanced functionality with very simple and familiar interfaces. Since it uses .NET, it is not available for Linux machines.

After testing out all the other image editors I could find (including Gimp) I settled on two progrms programs. The first is KolorPaint.

KolorPaint is a bit more advanced than Microsoft Paint, but has a similar layout and is very simple and intuitive to use. I can’t say much about this program other than it is the most used graphics application used on my computer. It is great for the kinds of simple things I do with images. It is by far my favorite graphics application.

The second graphics application I use quite a bit is named Krita.

Krita has a very intuitive layout, similar to Paint.NET, is a fairly lightweight image editor and even has advanced options. You can even write your own scripts. If you are familiar with Paint.NET, this is the perfect Linux replacement. It might take a little while to get used to where buttons and options are, but once you do you should feel right at home. I generally don’t do more advanced graphics editing. I don’t get into the whole Photoshop deal. If you do, Krita can still handle most of what you throw at it from what I have read.

Pinta is said to be a linux-native clone of Paint.NET.  So far it looks pretty good though some features are missing.

If these don’t cut it for you, then you can try to old staple of linux graphics editors The Gimp. If you’d like a more familiar photoshop-esque look and feel, try Gimpshop.

Everything mentioned so far have all been free programs, but one I’ve heard rave reviews about is Pixel Image Editor. It costs a little bit of money, but nothing compared to Photoshop, and it is multiplatform, meaning it can run on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

For Vector Graphics, I use Inkscape. This software is free and multiplatform and I was using it on XP before I switched to linux. It is quite easy to learn and does a good job. In fact I used it to modify a project on Thingiverse and have my own laser cut.

Some say you can use Photoshop in linux by using software called Crossover (more on this later) But I haven’t tried it myself.

Office Suite:

This has plagued me a bit. I’ve been using OpenOffice for a few of years now, well before my switch. I really like it and it is a full office replacement, however switching between OpenOffice (OO) and Microsoft Office is sometimes somewhat problematic. I have not had much success with Koffice.

Document Editing:

If your document is formatted a specific way, in one software, the other will not render it correctly in many cases. It is pulling teeth to try to get the text to fit exactly how it did in the original software. This is not limited to Word and OO Writer. Using other document editing software such as Abiword, and KWord prove just as problematic.

As far as which is best to use, I prefer OO Writer. Abiword is very fast to load (unlike either Microsoft Office or OO) but did not work well on my system. Kword is fast as well, but does not render images from documents on my system,

You can always go with a cloud office suite such as Google Docs or Zoho.

Presentations:

The same problem occurs with presentations. Once edited in OO, many times the presentation does not render very well in Microsoft (the world standard.)

Spreadsheets:

I don’t use this a lot, but when I do, for basic stuff, OO Spreadsheet is exactly the same as Excel at the level I use them.

Formulae:

OO Math is similar to Microsoft Equation Editor. This is just a personal preference thing. I like using the OO interface better than the Microsoft interface.

I use OO Math in OO Writer especially when I am writing school papers. When inserting a formula, a new pane in opened in your document window at the bottom, and you can see how the formula looks in your document as you type.

Overall:

You can run Microsoft Office in Linux under Crossover Linux or WINE , which I do as well, but I only use it when it is absolutely necessary to keep the formatting of the document exactly the same as it previously was. It is a bit buggy, and you cannot easily install certain plugins and it crashes from time to time for no apparent reason.

Overall, I suggest OpenOffice. If you NEED Microsoft Office, I suggest using a trial of the MS Office suite running in Crossover or WINE before buying and fully installing it to see if it works well with your system.

File Searching:

Some people swear by Beagle but I prefer Searchmonkey. Searchmonkey allows you to use Regular Expressions to search within files, and searches all the files on your system. Searchmonkey is by far the fastest search utility I have ever used.  If you are used to Windows file searches taking forever to complete, you will be surprised at the speed of Searchmonkey!

WYSIWYG HTML Editing:

From time to time, I’m in need of a WYSIWYG HTML Editor. It started with Nvu, then Komposer and now Seamonkey. They are all basically the same software, literally. They were all built off the same project.

Seamonkey is the most advanced I think at this point. You may know of Seamonkey as a good web browser on its own but if you go to “Window–>Composer” in the menu bar, it will open the current page as editable HTML in a WYSIWYG editor. I’ve used to this to edit static webpages for classes, for work, and even for a simple online portfolio. This works perfectly with a lot of open source web design templates.

One thing I dislike is that in my current version the HTML has no syntax highlighting. Nvu and Komposer both have syntax highlighting last I checked. Komposer even has a CSS editor built in.

With all three of these programs, the generated HTML is kind of hard to read in the sense that there are no spaces between things. I personally like to add some blank spaces in the HTML code between </div> lines just to make things easier to read, but if you do this, all three of the programs will eliminate the spaces when you go back the the WYSIWYG editor tab. Sometimes it is easier just to open the HTML in a syntax-highlighting text editor.

Screenshots:

Many times, I need to take screenshots on my desktop, whether it is for school or for an article. I could hit the Print Screen button, then edit the resulting image in an image editor, but that becomes very time consuming if I am taking a lot of screenshots.

In Windows, I used Winsnap or Snagit for desktop screenshots. In Linux, I found a near perfect replacement with KSnapshot.

Here you can see KSnapshot with a screenshot of KolourPaint for this article.

Batch Image Resize:

Uploading lots of images to the internet is a hassle, especially if you have to manually resize them all form the massive filesizes digital cameras take nowadays. Instead of having to use the terminal and look up some random script or program, I can use an incredibly simple GUI application.

Squash is a multiplatform batch image resizer. The program is great! You select the pictures you want to resize, select the percentage by which you want to resize them, and click the “Resize Images” button. Simple as that! It is a multithreaded application so it tries to fully take advantage of your processor to make resizing very fast. This is perfect for shrinking pics for the web and for Flickr or Picasa uploading.

Squash shrinking pics for this article.

So far this program in version 0.3 so it seems like the team is off to a great start. Personally I’d like to see a couple of features in the future releases such as the ability to select exact pixel size of resized images, as well as keeping the images in the window so you can run them again at a different size if needed. Otherwise this is a great program!

Coding:

Everyone has their own preferences. Some people love working in the terminal with Emacs or Vi. Personally I like a GUI text editor when coding.

gedit is a great general purpose text editor with syntax highlighting and plugins.

Kate is the editor I’m using more and more often nowadays.  it is a simply interface, but has several built-in features making it preferable for C/C++ development. I like the terminal being built in as well as the Build Plugin. Also, you can edit the settings of the editor very easily and even save your changes as a “Session.”

UniversalIndent is a great tool for code beautifying/ indenting. It is actually  GUI for several other code beautifiers. The options are very easy to use and it is great for use with simple text editors.

Netbeans is my absolute favorite IDE for java. This may be because I haven’t tried hard enough to learn other tools like Eclipse. Honestly, the features and ease of use of Netbeans has never put me in a position in which I would need to try another tool. It has consistently been a very high quality, feature-rich java IDE. There are tons of tutorials online for any problem you might run into using it. Out of several of the other GUI designers I’ve used for C or C++, Netbeans has hands-down the easiest and best GUI designer I’ve ever used. I very highly recommend this for java developers.

Music and Video Multimedia Playing:

VLC Player is a multiplatform all around media player. I’ve been using it since before my Linux conversion. It is simple and basic and that’s why I use it. It can even play .MOV files. This helps get away from the Apple’s dreaded Quicktime player. Personally I use it to make playlists of my music.

Video Editing Software:

I haven’t personally used these just yet, but three promising prospects I have heard a lot about lately are VLMC, OpenShot, and PiTiVi. Since I have yet to use any of these, I’ll refrain from judging them, but I recommend you try them all if you are interested in video editing.

Running Other Linux Distro Programs:

Alien is an amazing converter tool. It allows you to use a package file from another linux distribution.

Basically major flavors of linux have their own “package” format. If you download a program from the internet in .RPM format for instance, that was the RedHat or Fedora format, and you couldn’t easily use that program on Ubuntu. Alien fixes that problem by converting .RPM into .DEB files. It actually does a lot more than that, it can convert RPM, DPKG, SLP,and TGZ files between one another.

This opens up pretty much any program written for any major linux distro to be run on any other linux distro easily.

Running Windows Programs:

WINE is a program that allows you to run windows programs inside linux seamlessly. Simply double click your .EXE file and it should run in WINE (once installed.) WINE works with most windows programs, however, certain ones will give you some trouble or require special attention, or even hacks.

To make WINE a fully usable and commercial product, a company called CodeWeavers based their software Crossover on it. You don’t have to go into hard settings, or look at scripts or code or do any hacks in Crossover’s software in my experience. They have two main programs of interest.

Crossover Games gives you the ability to run many popular games or graphics-dependant windows software on linux.

Crossover Linux is useful for running standard Windows programs such as Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, Lotus notes, Quicken, etc. I have used this with limited success with Microsoft Office. There are two versions of this software. The standard version just allows you to do regular Windows stuff and Office. The pro version includes Crossover Games support as well as some other perks if you choose to install this on an entire network of computers.

For the money I highly recommend getting Crossover Linux Pro.

Music Editing (Recording)

Reaper is actually a Windows and OS X only program. It is a full featured free multitrack music editor, complete with MIDI and VST support. To run Reaper in linux there are a couple of options. Personally,

I use Crossover Games to run mine as it is easy to connect my USB microphone to the input of the program. It is quick and easy. I only use this software from time to time if a certain riff hits me while playing guitar and I want to save it.

Another option is using WINE directly. This can get rather messy and it is not easy to select your input. I had this working, but you have to start Jack Audio Connection Controller (qjackctl) before you start Reaper. You also have to tweak its settings quite a bit to get the buffering correct.

The last option is to use LinReaper.  Read through the forum linked to get the newest version. I personally never got this working on my system despite a couple of tries.

Problems with reaper include constant updates (which isn’t a problem on native systems, but annoying to set everything up again and again in crossover or WINE) and the fact that it doesn’t have a built in WAV editor. You have to get a separate WAV editor for this task which you can link in Reaper’s settings; though I’ve had limited success linking anything to Reaper running in WINE or Crossover.

The WAV editor I prefer is a simple lightweight Windows program called Wavosaur. I’ve had great success with this program.

Some great native linux Music editing software are also available.

Audacity is cross platform and has been around for quite some time.It has a simple interface and is very intuitive to use.

Ardour is a more advanced audio editor.  It has more options and is more akin to Acid Pro or ProTools.

Google Sketchup:

Google Sketchup is a simple, free, easy to use 3D CAD software. It is only for Windows or OS X machines. Personally, I’ve used Google Sketchup with limited success in Crossover Games on my Linux Mint machines. Sometimes exporting 2D images of the Sketches crashes Sketchup which can require a fresh install to fix. Plugins also don’t show up in the menu for me.

Wings 3D, Misfit Model 3D,  Meshlab and others are some great native linux 3D CAD software packages.

Conclusion:

I won’t lie to you and say I have it all figured out just yet. I keep my old XP machine in case I have to run software that is Windows specific (which is rather rare.) As far as school work goes, in some cases you must use Internet Explorer for accessing online materials and sometimes certain simulation softwares, etc. As rare as this is, you want to make sure you won’t be inconvenienced by it.

Since I bought a new computer, I decided to keep my old one instead of get rid of it. This system has worked well for me. A great option for many people is to dual boot Windows and Linux. It is a great option but this is up to you. Others still may choose to use a virtual machine within Windows to host a linux computer, or vice versa. What ever your method, I hope to have helped your transitions to linux.

Even some “experts” at the music store will have no clue what they are talking about, so let me enlighten you something so you won’t fall prey to their stupidity.

I like to record music from time to time on my computer.  Nothing special, a riff here or there on the guitar, or a cover song or something. I wanted to have the simplest method for recording so when I chose to, I can focus on recording music instead of setting things up.   I found the MXL USB.006 Condenser Microphone to be perfect for my application, however everyone and their brother advised me against it. Even the guy who sold it to me at “Guitar Place” said it wasn’t as good as running a standard condenser mic through a mixer and using a USB sound card. The one he recommended was the Behringer UCA202.  So I bought them both to see the differences.

With both items plugged in, issuing the command “lsusb” to list all my USB devices in the terminal shows the following:

Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 006 Device 004: ID 08bb:2900 Texas Instruments Japan PCM2900 Audio Codec
Bus 006 Device 003: ID 08bb:2902 Texas Instruments Japan
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 007: ID 062a:0000 Creative Labs Optical mouse
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 003: ID 1267:0103 Logic3 / SpectraVideo plc G-720 Keyboard
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

The numbers in the 6th column show the hexadecimal of values vendor ID and product ID numbers.  You can see two entries for “Texas Instruments…”  The one that says “PCM2900 Audio Codec”  is the MXL mic.  The other TI entry is for the Behringer UCA202.   Notice that the Product ID is very similar (2900 vs. 2902).  This refers to the chip they are using to convert the audio to USB.  Being that they are both 290x means they are the same series of chip.

Here are the datasheets for these chips:

Here’s the 2902 (in the Behringer) and here you can find the 2900 (in the MXL mic)

The only difference between these two chips is that one (the one in the Behringer) has SPDIF out, and the other does not. Quality is exactly the same.

This lead me to think that the foretold lack of quality must be from an inferior microphone element. This lead me to more research. The mic itself is considered a “cardioid condenser mic.”  “Cardioid” means if you were to draw out a shape of where the mic can actually pic up sound (its sensitivity pattern) you will find it is shaped somewhat like a heart ( ♥ ). Wikipedia has a great article showing the different sensitivity patterns of mics.

The term “condenser” means that basically the mic is a variable capacitor. Sound waves vary the distance between two capacitive plates changing the capacitance between them. This change in capacitance is the electronic incarnation of the sound, allowing it to then be mixed normally.

MXL claim that they use their standard gold-sputtered diaphragm condenser mic element in the USB.006.

Condenser mics require DC power to work . For this they use 48v Phantom Power. This is basically provided by a mixer or preamp and is sent via XLR mic cable. Since the USB.006 mic has no normal XLR cable, they MXL had to come up with a way to provide phantom power for the mic element. They likely used a charge pump circuit to up the 5v DC USB power to 48v. This allows the output of the MXL USB.006 to be exactly comparable to standard condenser mics.

It is safe to say that the MXL USB006 mic has the same quality as any comparable mic running through a mixer and into the Behringer UCA202. Anyone who says they can tell a difference is a complete moron (like many self proclaimed “gurus” who work at music stores.)  Put it this way; if they knew what they were talking about, do you think they’d be the guy selling you stuff at the music store?

I know this isn’t the case for everyone. Many times you will find an authentic guru at the music store.  It just really bothered me how these people just accepted that the USB mic wasn’t as good as the other methods because some other “expert” told them so. Worse than that, they undersold themselves (sicne many work on commission and the Behringer costs about 1/3 to 1/4 the costs of the USB.006 mic) and perpetrating a lie. Spouting off bad advice is no way to help people. If you don’t know what you are talking about, please at least try to look it up before giving advice on the topic.

Both the MXL USB.006 and the Behringer UCA202 are great cheap USB sound devices and I highly recommend both of them to anyone looking for good quality simple and fast recording. Personally, I use them both at the same time when I record, and even use the Behringer UCA202 as the default sound card on my machine.

</rant>

There has been a big controversy the past couple of years about water bottles.  It is wasteful to use single use plastic water bottles.  To remedy the problem of excess garbage (since only about 23% of the drink bottles used each year are recycled) many people began using reusable containers such as Nalgene and SIGG bottles.  It later came out that these bottles released the chemical BPA into the water. Even aluminum bottles leeched aluminum into the water. It seemed like there was no safe solution.

Having read a lot about what to look for in a reusable bottle, we began searching for the best solution. While shopping at T.J. MAXX Jessica and I stumbled on a large variety of steel and aluminum bottles.  One brand of bottle seemed to have gotten everything right. The ones we chose were Nathan Human Propulsion Laboratories 700ml steel bottles.

The first thing we noticed about these bottles was the plastic lid and silicon mouthpiece. This is good because they can be used easily in the car without having to tilt your head back or block your view of the road (that’s why fast food drinks have straws.) Also, the lid prevented anything from spilling. When the mouthpiece is closed, it seals off the straw so it won’t leak.

The bottle was designed with the outdoors in mind. There is a ridge around the base that makes this bottle fit VERY tightly and securely in a metal bottle holder on a bike. Using it this way WILL scratch the paint off the outside, but the bottle will stay put, even for black diamond mountain biking trails. Even if the bottle gets scratched, again, it will never rust, so there’s no real damage to the bottle. For instance, the blue bottle in the pics here has a couple of dents in it, and lots of paint scratched off in random places from mountain biking, but you can’s really tell it.

Another great part of the bottles design is the wide mouth of the bottle. You can easily fit ice cubes in it if you choose. It is a single-walled vessel (meaning it only has one layer of steel separating the inside contents and the outside of the bottle) so it is only recommended for use with cool or cold liquid. Hot liquids generally require a double-walled vessel like a thermos so the heat of the contents won’t heat up the outside of the bottle and burn you.

Another nice thing we noticed about these bottles was the weight.  They aren’t too heavy, but they feel substantial; not like they are apt to fall apart after a few uses.

These bottles are made of a high quality food grade stainless steel. They will never rust (unlike cheaper Sub Zero brand steel bottles.) You can tell they are high quality stainless steel because magnets don’t stick to high quality stainless steel. The steel is not coated with anything on the inside as it doesn’t need a coating. Also, since it is stainless steel, it won’t leech into the water like aluminum bottles.

Cleaning is a breeze because these are top rack dishwasher safe. Since they are a bit tall, I bent the tines of the dishwasher rack just a little bit so I can fit them in there.  I wash the lids on the top rack as well, and the straws in the silverware basket. If you do put something in the bottle that dries or otherwise won’t come out in the dishwasher, these bottles are really easy to clean as they have a very large mouth.  The Nathan website says you don’t need a special brush to clean them, but to make it easy on myself I use a baby bottle brush if needed.

The lid, straws, and even the mouthpiece are all designed with food safe and dishwasher safe materials. The straws are made of polyethylene, the cap is made of polypropylene and of course, the nozzle is silicon. The design on the outside of the bottle is also dishwasher safe and does not fade, even in the “pots and pans” cycle. The only thing I’ve found to damage the design is dropping it on rocks or concrete, or otherwise scratching it REALLY hard with something.

When you buy a Nathan bottle, you will get a few extra straws.  I didn’t have any reason to use my extra straws  in the first 6 months I used it, and I use mine every day. Just recently, one of the straws that I use daily cracked on the end that connects to the cap. I simply cut off the 1cm cracked part with a kitchen knife, and I’m good to go. If you end up finally going through all of your straws, or the mouthpiece gets chewed up, you can go to the Nathan website and buy a replacement pack. Alternatively, you could just unscrew the cap and drink without the straw.

I use the finger loop constantly to pick up the bottle,  carry it, or even close the straw with a flick of my wrist. It has a nice little clip on it so it can be hitched to your belt loop or backpack on a hike. The clip looks a bit anemic, but has proven to be sturdy in everyday use.

All that being said, there is a problem with this bottle.  When closing the mouthpiece, it sometimes drips the water that was in the mouthpiece. This isn’t a big deal.  The second problem deals with pressure. While being at about 750ft. altitude, If I drive to the mountains then open the bottle, water spews out like a fire hose for a second or two. This is to be expected with any bottle though. This also happens to a small degree if I use very cold water in the bottle, and it stays closed and heats up all day.  Once the water has expanded, the air in the bottle pressurizes. When the mouthpiece opens, the pressure forces a bit of water out.  I have found two methods to solve this. The first involves completely removing the cap for a second to equalize pressure then screwing it back on before opening the mouthpiece.  The second method is slightly less reliable.  Open the mouthpiece half way (just before water can come out) and push down the little orange pressure valve in the center of the cap. Once you are satisfied the pressure is equal, you can try to open the mouthpiece the rest of the way.

To recap, other than the pressure problem that sometimes occurs, these bottles are great! They give you extra straws and even have a kit you can buy to replace the straws and get a couple extra mouthpieces should you loose one or in case it gets chewed up. The materials are top notch and design with ease of use and ease of cleaning in mind. I give them 5 out of 5 stars on the design of this product. I actually use mine so much that for my birthday, I got a second one! these are great gifts for anyone, whether they like the outdoors or not.

For my book, I decided to order a 8.5″x8.5″ square photobook.  My reason for this decision was two fold.  One, the digital scrapbook backgrounds I used were 12″ x 12″, so a square book would be the easiest to create from my photoshop files.  Two, this was the largest book size that had a casewrap (wraparound) cover.  I really wanted to have a full color custom cover, so I went with this size option.

To get my files ready for upload, I simply exported all of my photoshop pages to a 8.75.25″x8.75″ jpeg image.  The site claims to resize images for you, but I am paranoid.  I wanted to make sure that none of my images would be clipped or cut in a way I did not want.

The viovio site is fairly easy to navigate (most of the time).  I uploaded my files in the order I wanted them displayed, which worked well, because viovio automatically put them into this same order.  To get my book ready for printing, I just dragged and dropped each exported jpeg onto the page I wanted it to be on the photobook.

Placing My Order

Placing my order was quick and easy. For pricing, I had assumed that one page would consist of a front AND a back, but it turns out that every front and back are considered one page.  By this calculation, my book was 44 pages long.  With the full color cover, the upgrade to what viovio calls “pro binding”, and shipping/handling/taxes, my order came to 42.43.  I considered this a small price to pay for a personalized keepsake and also considering many competitor’s pricing.  Shutterfly’s pricing for an 8″x8″ book (which is smaller than what I ordered) would have been about the same price I what I paid, but that is not including their $8 shipping cost or tax.  I really had wanted to go with Inkubook, but their hardcover options are currently fairly limited.

Waiting for My Order

I placed my order on Tuesday, August 4th, 2009.  The next day I received an email stating that my order had “been sent to manufacturing. We expect it to ship by Wednesday, August 19, 2009″.  I was so excited, I could hardly stand it.

Still Waiting for My Order

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009, came and and went.  Once it hit Friday, August 28th, I realized that 9 days had passed since my book was supposedly shipped and I had paid for 2 day shipping.  I decided to email viovio to find out where my book was!  The very next day viovio replied.  That same day my book had also arrived!

Finally Receiving My Order

Once I received my photobook I was enamored by its size.  It is portable enough to carry anywhere to show off or fit nicely on a bookshelf or table.  It is big enough to show off details in pictures.  The full cover cover turned out beautiful.

The colors on the cover are impressive!

I was also in love with the binding.  The photobook looks just like a book you would buy at the book stores.  I am in awe of the transformation that the book making industry is undergoing!

This is the view of the binding when the book is closed.

Just like a new book, the pages are crisp when you first open your book.

And this is how the binding looks when the book is open.

The coloration matched very well in comparison with my original files.  The quality of the printing was also very clean.

This was one of my favorite layouts in the book.

Some of the better photographs used especially popped from the pages.

Images from a higher quality camera produce the best end results.

I thought that my pages would be full bleed, but the center of each page was marked by a white stripe.

The white line was in the center of every page, but it did not distract from the book.

There were a few pages that are of concern to me.  It seems as though the glue from the binding splurged up into some of my pages, creating an uneven seam.

This particular page did opened about 1 cm less than the other pages due to what appears to be glue from the binding splured up into the page.

I did not find this out until after I was almost done ordering, but viovio adds a logo to your back cover.  It is a lot less invasive that I expected it to be.

The logo is about the size of two pennies.

My Experience (Thus Far…) with Customer Support

Since I was already in touch with customer support, I mentioned the glue splurges.  The representative asked that I send photos of what I was talking about.  That was today.  I will update on the outcome of my contact with customer support.  Overall, I love my book and customer support has responded quickly (so far).  It it were not for the glue splurges and very slow shipping, I would give viovio 5 stars.

**Update** Overall Viovio Experience

After 3 short and speedy emails with viovio,  I did not recieve any word about whether or not the glue splurges were “normal”.  What I did recieve about 3 weeks later was a whole entire new book!  It was a surprise when I recieved it in the mail because they did not tell me they were sending me a new book.  Although their communication was a bit lacking, I am definitely impressed with Viovio’s products and quality.   5 stars to Viovio!  I anticipate in using their services in the future and will share future experiences :0).

Recently we purchased an Exo Terra Reptile Den (Size Large) for our Leopard Gecko, Gizmo.  It was half price at a local pet store, so we couldn’t resist.  The premise of this product is that it has one piece that provides a secluded den for your animal and it goes inside the cage; it has another piece that covers the den and it goes outside the cage.  The pieces stay attached by extremely strong magnets.  Upon opening the two pieces for the first time, Adam quickly smashed his fingers between the rocks (hehe, at least it wasn’t me!).  Like I said, the magnets are strong!  Here is our review of the product and how we modified it for our leopard gecko’s cage.

Product Review

Previously we have purchased many toys for cats we have had that they NEVER play with.  I wondered if this would be the case for our leopard gecko.  He is a picky little bugger.  Gizmo hates his cage being rearranged.  He only eats two things – moths and a certain brand dead crickets (and he refuses to eat anything else!).  He hates lizard leashes.  He hates children and barks at them.  If you pick him up, he is only comfortable on your shoulder.   He is a grumpy little lizard.  Would he like his new reptile den?

Upon first putting the rock into the cage, Gizmo was not interested in it.  It sat in there for an entire week without any evidence of him even noticing it.  We decided to lure him into the rock with food and he apprehensively crawled in, ate the food, and then promply crawled back out.  Humphh….. he probably would not use his rock.  This was the cat scenario all over again.

Surprisingly, the very next day, we could not find Gizmo anywhere in his cage.  I opened the rock and viola!, he was there.  Nowadays Gizmo can usually be found in his Exo Terra Reptile Den.

Gizmo actually uses his Exo Terra Reptile Den!

Outfitting the Rock

In order to prevent more pinched fingers, we (…well, more like Adam and his sore finger) decided to attach felt pads to the outer rock piece.  As the rock clanged against the glass side of the tank, I also couldn’t help but wonder if this rock could break or crack the glass.  Although I don’t think that would likely happen, I feel it is better to venture on the safe side.

Felt pads purchased at a dollar store make a quick fix.

The felt pads were easy to attach.  Simply peel of the paper and stick on to the corners of the rock.  I only used four, so I have extras for other household needs.

Felt pads attach easily to the outer rock piece.

I was worried at first about the thickness of the felt pads.  Would they be too far from the other piece for the magnets to work?  Would the gap be too large for Gizmo’s liking?  Once I put the rock together, my worries were gone.  The magnets are strong enough, even at a small distance.  Plus, Gizmo still loves his new Exo Terra Reptile Den.

Gizmo loves his reptile den, felt pads and all!